Home Technology Zero Trust Security in Healthcare: How It Protects Health Data

Zero Trust Security in Healthcare: How It Protects Health Data

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Zero Trust Security

Any healthcare establishment dealing with patients’ sensitive data must ensure its infrastructure is secure. Since healthcare data is among the most sensitive data, it is subjected to cyber-attacks. The threat of ransomware and other cyber attacks is a huge concern. The privacy regulations are driving hospitals and other healthcare providers to safeguard patient health information. Zero Trust security is the best way to achieve this, and it’s the only way to keep up with increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks.

Since Healthcare data is a vulnerable target for hackers, the need for Zero Trust security is growing in healthcare organizations. Data breaches can lead to identity theft, financial loss, and more. That’s why Zero Trust security is the way to go. The Zero Trust approach uses continuous validation of users and other resources to protect sensitive data. Here’s how Zero Trust security protects healthcare data.

What is Zero Trust Security Model?

Regarding security, Zero Trust infrastructure does not trust any end user or device, regardless of who they are or their location. This “Zero Trust” policy applies to all users, gadgets, and workloads inside and outside your security environment. The fundamental tenet of Zero Trust security is that “no one should have automatic access to anything”. It requires all applications, systems, and users to always request access to an organization’s resources.

The State of Security in the Healthcare Sector

According to the data collected by Protenus alone, data breaching of more than 50 million patients’ records occurred in recent years. There were around 905 incidents of data hacking. Generally, it takes an average of 402 days to discover that cybercriminals have hacked hospital authorities. According to an Accenture study, 18% of healthcare workers are willing to sell private information to unauthorized parties for as little as $500 to $1,000. Insiders are responsible for 58% of all breaches in the healthcare industry.

How Zero Trust Security Protects Health Data?

Regarding cybersecurity, healthcare organizations face a unique set of challenges. They deal with sensitive patient data, a high-value target for cybercriminals. This means they must implement security controls that ensure only authorized employees have access to the data they need. Zero Trust in healthcare ensures authentication for every attempt at establishing access to healthcare organizations’ resources.

Zero Trust Eradicates Perimeter Verification

In this approach, there has been a substantial change in how we secure our networks, infrastructure, and data. The perimeter verification is replaced by the ongoing user, resources, and transaction verification. It eliminates the once-only practice. Healthcare organizations are best prepared when they assume that every program, transaction, and device is a threat. It makes them more cautious if one of these components tries to exploit the network. Thus, a Zero Trust infrastructure is great for making substantial cybersecurity improvements in the healthcare sector.

Zero Potential Access Points

The information that healthcare institutions hold is highly valuable in the black market. Besides, data thefts can steal data from  EHRs, mobile devices, vendors, cloud apps, remote workers, and medical equipment. They serve as potential access points into a company’s network for hackers and cybercriminals. So, healthcare establishments need to ensure data security to protect patients. Since the Zero Trust model does not trust anybody and requires continuous validation, it prevents hackers from manipulating potential access points.

An Innovative Approach

The perimeter-based security paradigm used by most healthcare businesses will no longer be viable. It is mainly due to the interconnected nature of the future with IoMT devices, advanced technology, robotics, and more. To stay ahead of these dynamics, healthcare firms must continue to invest in cybersecurity principles while fundamentally changing from the castle-and-moat strategy to a Zero Trust model. In today’s digital landscape, healthcare organizations are turning to the Zero Trust approach to security as a crucial strategy for protecting patient and company data.

Protection against Cybersecurity Problems

Even though the healthcare industry stands to lose a lot from cyberattacks, many hospitals and health systems place little emphasis on investing in cybersecurity. Most hospitals do not possess enough funding to safeguard their supply chain systems fully. Besides, most hospital IT staff acknowledge that they lack protection against some of the most prevalent cybersecurity problems. Zero Trust eliminates implicit trust and ensures that each request for access to the resources is verified regarding who is making the request and what is being sought.

Zero Trust Enables Agility

Zero Trust may not completely prevent cyberattacks, but it makes networks more resistant to smaller breaches and attacks. Even if hackers become successful in obtaining credentials, a Zero Trust design prevents them from getting very far. The system will constantly challenge the hackers’ approaches to stealing data. It stops them from entering the entire organization’s network through a mere chink in the organization’s network.

Conclusion

The cure for healthcare’s massive breach crisis is Zero Trust. Healthcare organizations are rapidly expanding their Zero Trust approach since insiders seek to steal patient data for their advantage. With stolen login credentials, hackers also find antiquated systems, stealing millions of records in a few months. It is the need of the hour for healthcare providers to abandon the outdated “trust but verify” strategy. Zero Trust requires that healthcare providers never trust any access to their resources but always verify.