Preventing Your IoT Medical Device From Becoming a Network Vulnerability Point

Keeping patient data safe and operations secure is an essential responsibility of any healthcare organization. Samuel Hill, the Director of Product Marketing at Medigate by Claroty, spoke with Highway to Health’s David Kemp about the importance of cybersecurity in healthcare and what organizations like Medigate are doing to keep institutions safe from threats.

Medical device security is as critical for a network to protect as patient data. While people don’t necessarily think of a cybersecurity attack on something like an infusion machine, the risks are real. These devices could pose issues for a healthcare organization should such an attack occur.

“Every single one of them is connected to a network and brings a fairly significant amount of risk,” Hill said. “And so, what we’ve tried to do is give an incredible amount of visibility and accurate visibility to those devices on the hospital’s network so they can better manage the risk of those devices.”

Navigating & lowering security risks and maximizing the operational effectiveness of all the medical devices in a healthcare ecosystem is what Medigate does for companies. “All of this is built on this foundation of data that we collect about each of these devices and report to the hospital in a streamlined way that helps many different people within an organization.”

Hill said hackers aren’t necessarily interested in the medical device, but they see it as an accessible entry-point into the rest of the network. “They’re trying to get into the network by any means necessary, and a connected device that can communicate to the internal and external network is another potential connection point.” These devices, designed for medical task performance, weren’t necessarily designed with built-in security features. So, it is up to the healthcare organizations to monitor these devices and ensure the proper security measures are in place.

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