Medicine has not been immune to the wave of digitization that’s reshaped so many other aspects of life. With the growth of IoT and the advent of its corollary IoMT (Internet of Medical Things), the paradigm for modern healthcare has shifted. Indeed, estimates suggest that the healthcare IoT market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 29.9 percent to reach $322.2 billion by 2025.
Bearing the weight of a global pandemic, the healthcare system is struggling with medical surge and runs on vital equipment. Sadly, hospitals have also been beset by a marked increase in cybercrime — threatening their very efficiency, safety, and security.
With the outbreak of the novel coronavirus came shelter-in-place orders and the common sense desire to keep people away from potential virus hotspots. For hospitals, that's resulted in a very serious effort to move non-essential employees to a work-from-home model.
With the outbreak of the novel coronavirus crisis, hackers smell blood in the water. Focused on addressing the crisis, already stretched super thin, and forced to improvise at each new turn, healthcare organizations in particular present an attractive target for hackers.
The embrace of cloud solutions in healthcare has been accelerating at a frenetic pace. Since the introduction of the Affordable Care Act which compelled the adoption of Electronic Medical Records...
Yesterday CISA released an advisory for nineteen previously unknown vulnerabilities affecting Treck's embedded TCP/IP stack (also known as a network stack). This disclosure was the result of some...
In the world of enterprise information security, the specific areas of knowledge and expertise that set you apart in your current situation might not be as directly and immediately applicable to a...
In large organizations it's only natural for most of the workforce to ignore network analytics — mentally relegating it to the domain of IT and IT alone. In hospitals, more often than not, that...
In times like these, we could all use a distraction. With that in mind, we've created this short quiz on the state of connected healthcare and its digital risks.
As COVID-19 continues to plague the world, governments are beginning to pass legislation aimed at both strengthening critical infrastructure and propping up the wider economy.
There seems to be a lot of doom and gloom in the air these days and it's not hard to understand why. While I admit to sometimes playing the role of Negative Nelly myself, the truth is that all...
As part of the worldwide battle against COVID-19, hospitals will need to maximize the availability and visibility of key medical assets. By automatically locating medical devices and tracking...
There's no denying it and no point in ignoring it, so let's just acknowledge it: there's a big ugly elephant in the room and it goes by the name COVID-19. It's on everyone's mind, has already...
On Wednesday March 11th, reports began to emerge about a vulnerability in the compression mechanism used by Microsoft for SMBv3.1.1. If exploited, this vulnerability would allow an attacker to...
In business as in life it’s important to cover your backside. More important and higher minded though is covering your bases. If you engage in risky behavior, it’s a good idea to insulate yourself...
From improving patient experience to enhancing medical procedures, technology functions as the engine driving the healthcare system forward.
Each year there are countless conferences and events focused on healthcare management and technology, but with so many options, it can be difficult to pick the right ones for your specific...
Providing consumers greater control and transparency over their personal data, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect on January 1, 2020.
Today, GE Healthcare — in coordination with CyberMDX and CISA (formerly ICS-CERT) — publicly disclosed the discovery of six software design flaws affecting seven products in their popular...
The new year is a time take stock and be grateful for what we have. At CyberMDX, we're grateful for our amazing team, the best-in-class solution we've developed and continually improve, and of...
Each year we take some time to look at the trends we see happening in hospital technology and transformation. It is instructive to study the patterns and disruptive pressures contributing to...
Along with all its holiday cheer, this time of year always seems to bring a bounty of predictions as to what the industry will experience over the course of our next lap around the sun. Often,...
In the world of information security, each new year brings new opportunities for growth and learning. From new cyber threats and mitigations to new tools and techniques, there's no shortage of new...
It goes without saying that advances in healthcare technology are fundamentally changing the way that medicine is practiced. Recently, it would seem that these advances have begun to evolve more...
The healthcare industry has come a long way in terms of technological advancement. Healthcare IT systems, structures, and standards have transformed modern healthcare and provided hospitals with...
Healthcare is the most cyber-targeted industry, with nearly one out of every six US data breaches happening in hospitals and the problem is only getting worse. 15,085,302 individual medical...
"Who will watch the watchmen?" It's a deceptively poignant and tricky question dating back to ancient Rome when it was famously posed by Juvenal. Then, as now, it would seem many of the most...
It's been more than a year since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has taken effect. The European Commission's wide-reaching law was designed to protect the privacy of EU citizens and...
In 2018, the global medical device and clinical asset market was worth approximately $8.98 billion. By 2025, it’s estimated that it will be worth $61.35 billion. Hospitals, on average, spend 11-13%
In 2004, Nema (the National Electrical Manufacturers Association), together with HIMSS (Health Information and Management Systems Society) and a number of other security experts and government...
It's already a well-known fact: cybersecurity constitutes a major challenge for connected healthcare operations, regardless of their unique organizational structures and processes. When each...
In the last several years, data breaches and cyber attacks on healthcare organizations have been in the news with alarming frequency.
This article is the final installment of a three-part series. We've already examined how those traits and trends converged around the principle of agility. Now, we'll discuss how the push for...
This article is the second installment of a three-part series. In the previous installment, we examined how technology evolved and how it has culminated in the streamlined, automated, intelligence...
"When wireless is perfectly applied, the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole.”
Machines are indispensable, yet imperfect. They work fine one day and break down the next. What’s more, even if the machine remains in essentially the same working order, you’ll still need to...
It’s only reasonable that access to sensitive medical devices should be restricted to those who require it. Physical access guidelines are designed to ensure that only professionals with the...
On August 13, 2019 Microsoft utilized “Patch Tuesday” to release 36 new CVEs. Of those vulnerabilities, four stand out for their striking similarity to the BlueKeep vulnerability that sent shock...
On July 29th, 2019, eleven vulnerabilities affecting the “VxWorks” Real Time Operating System (RTOS) were publicly disclosed. Since these vulnerabilities were all reported by the same source and...
The world is a dangerous place. Perhaps it’s always been that way. Nature is governed by evolutionary competition, politics take shape where interests and power meet, and economics are ruled by...
Biomedical engineers are the unseen force behind some of modern medicine's greatest achievements. Biomedical engineers are at the forefront of exciting research and they are staples of day-to-day...
HDOs occupy a unique position: on the one hand, their focus is on patient care, and their success is measured by health outcomes. On the other hand, they are businesses, with investors,...
For the first time, on July 9, 2019, ICS-CERT disclosed a vulnerability specifically impacting anesthesia machines. If exploited, the vulnerability would allow an attacker to silence alarms, alter...
On June 18, 2019, Netflix researchers, together with MITRE, issued an advisory containing four vulnerabilities relating to how Linux handles TCP Selective-Acknowledgement (SACK) at the kernel...
The healthcare industry in the US has been facing widespread disruption for some years. The Affordable Care Act in 2010 demanded that the industry carry out wholesale changes to its processes and...
At one point early on in the beloved C. S. Lewis children’s novel, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Mr. Tumnus sets the scene, intimating the stakes involved and explaining his own timidity,...
The climate for healthcare organizations is a challenging one, with healthcare costs expected to rise by 6.5% over the next year. Between tighter compliance regulations, increased competition, and
For healthcare organizations, regulatory compliance is serious business. Non-compliance not only carries serious ethical implications and threatens the loss of public trust, but even from a purely...
On May 14, 2019, Microsoft published an advisory for a newly discovered remote code execution vulnerability. Given the identifier CVE-2019-0708, the vulnerability has been more popularly named...
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 10 years, you’ve heard of the Internet of Things, or IoT as it’s commonly abbreviated. The subset of IoT belonging specifically to healthcare...
Hospitals have an average of 15 to 20 devices per bed, which means even a comparatively small 100-bed hospital is home to thousands of medical devices, most of which are connected to the hospital...
Today’s hospitals are centers of advanced technology, with upwards of several thousand medical devices and clinical assets under their roof. The US is home to 6,210 hospitals, each with 50 to 500...
Picture this: you're a doctor at Holy Mountain’s Heart & Vascular Center. You're running late. Rushing past a waiting room full of patients in need of care, you hurry to your office and unlock the...
Though cybersecurity is most closely associated with the IT department, the truth is that it affects and touches all aspects of an organization. Indeed, even the most devoted IT professionals...
“Cybersecurity is currently one of health care’s largest concerns. The unlawful manipulation of medical devices locally, or more recently remotely, via malware and ransomware attacks, represents...
Hospitals operate in a challenging environment: relationships with insurers, state as well as federal rules and regulations, staff shortages, emerging treatments, new clinical technologies, and...
It’s often said there’s a statistic to support any story you want to tell, a fact that’s borne out by the worrying increase in fake news, but some are repeated so often they’re worth listening to:
Spurred by competition, razor-thin operating margins, and government regulation, healthcare organizations are under immense pressure to quickly and regularly implement new technologies.
The rush to adopt IoT devices in consumer and business markets is well documented, but the scale of uptake comes at a cost: the increased risk of cyber attack. More connected devices and the...
The world is changing; and while there may never have been a time when that statement was not true, it seems particularly true today. Change these days seems to be a lot more aggressive and...
Like most business units at this time of year, biomedical and clinical teams will be reflecting on the last 12 months and trying, as best they can, to figure out what the new year will bring....
It’s been a year since Spectre and Meltdown — the hardware vulnerabilities discovered collaboratively by Google’s Project Zero and others — went public. Those vulnerabilities rightly garnered...
Subject to stringent regulatory regimes with considerable legacy complications hindering new infrastructure, technology, or processes — most hospitals are also saddled with significant...
Medical devices are often the weak point in a hospital’s technology landscape and, if compromised, could affect patient privacy, health, and safety.
Use of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) in hospitals is growing. IP addressable medical technologies help deliver personalized care more quickly, give healthcare professionals access to...
It seems that every day we hear about the need for more and better medical cybersecurity measures, but why? We don’t hear about the need for retailers to improve shoplifting prevention mechanisms....
Machine learning is totally transforming the healthcare industry; from how patient care is delivered, to how laboratory procedures are conducted, to diagnostics, all the way to how information...
By now, most of us are familiar with the “WannaCry” ransomware attack. This attack exploited a weakness in Microsoft's Windows operating system to encrypt files and render computers useless until...
I won't sugar coat it. Hospitals are seen by hackers as "soft" and valuable targets. The modern medical facility is connected to the internet in a multitude of ways.
CyberMDX made news when its research and analysis team identified and responsibly disclosed two serious and hitherto unknown medical device vulnerabilities.
Directed by Oscar-nominated filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, the new Netflix documentary, The Bleeding Edge, profiles five people who suffered horrendously when the medical devices on which...
Medical devices can be your best asset and your worst nightmare. X-ray machines, defibrillators, and other medical electronics are life-saving technologies, but they can also be easily hacked if...
Cybercrime is nuanced, and while most medical facilities think they are secure, undiscovered security gaps are being exploited every day. And, it’s not always easy to detect a breach.
Your CISO has a big job: develop network security processes and procedures, while addressing privacy, confidentiality and compliance standards, while investigating and managing health information...
You cannot secure what you do not see. How do you know that there is not a malicious file embedded within this text if you don't even know that the text is here? To achieve comprehensive...
