Healthcare organizations have been forced to embrace the cloud platform due to COVID-19. The deployment of such a platform has been often done without proper validation, leaving the system open for vulnerabilities.
The rapid adoption of the digital transformation process by healthcare institutions has left the databases riddled with liabilities and greater risk surface. Frontline workers and employers are left with no choice but to embrace cloud analytics and remote access to enable operations. Business leaders feel that while the pandemic can be overcome soon, the impact on healthcare employees will be profound, IT security professionals will be left to handle uncharted attack surface to ensure business integrity and customer data confidentiality.
Healthcare employees have to leverage remote hosting to back telehealth expansions and WFH accommodations. Business leaders acknowledge that while cloud computing ensures better resource utilization; it opens up the system to various risks in the long term. When cloud platform implementation takes place in a hurry without proper protocols, InfoSec and IT teams are left with a larger attack surface to tackle. They will be left to seek cross-enterprise collaboration and implement high-vigilance protocol at all times to prevent a data breach. The teams may be required to design new strategies to guarantee the restricted visibility of the health data centers.
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Most healthcare organizations were working in the Silo pattern before the pandemic. It means that datacenters were localized and protected by firewalls. Now during the pandemic, they have shifted to cloud platforms which have resulted in a sudden transfer of data outside the conventional boundaries. IT security leaders say that potential threatening activities like internal reconnaissance, data exfiltration, command and control, and lateral transfer need to be identified. As per the analysis, these activities are generally associated with the manipulation and exploitation of the cloud migration process. Hackers prefer these measures to direct attack on the system.
IT leaders say that the healthcare industry has seen a sudden rise in command-control and data exfiltration due to increased remote access to the internal database by remote workers. Hackers have taken advantage of the scenario and used “Smash and Grab” behavior to collect illicit data when a large volume of data is being sent to a cloud host. The transfer to cloud platforms has also resulted in increased data-smuggling activities.
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The Healthcare industry is in a reactive mode as compared to other industries that had already embraced the digital transformation process with due diligence. Healthcare organizations are now left with identifying and tackling attacks in real-time rather than preventing potential attacks. The sheer volume of uncharted medical IoT devices has resulted in a larger attack surface than that anticipated by IT Security leaders.
