Health Tech Innovation: How to Advance Data Security To Support Healthcare Accessibility

As with most industries, healthcare should consider adopting a zero-trust approach. This security measure can help decrease an organization's attack surface, create accurate response automation and prevent the compromise. Healthcare’s digital modernization across patient, staff, doctors, and technologies is challenging security teams’ skills and capacity at a scale not seen in past. In the U.S. in July of this year, there were 66 data breaches of 500 or more exposed records reported to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights. While the number of breaches was down slightly from June, the overall number is still above the monthly average of 57 for 2022. One reason for this surge in attack activity is that digital transformation has outpaced current security controls in healthcare, creating holes for bad actors to exploit. The explosive growth of the interconnected internet of things (IoT) and modern medical devices designed to improve patient care has also expanded attack surfaces – and cybercriminals are taking advantage.