HIMSS 2019: Cybersecurity Is a War — Here’s How Providers Can Fight Back | HealthTech Magazine

Halifax Health Vice President and CIO Tom Stafford views the constant effort needed to defend against cybersecurity threats as a war.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got the bad guys trying to get to our data,” Stafford said Tuesday at HIMSS19 in Orlando, Fla. “And so we have to do novel things and layer technology to make sure we’re protecting our patients’ information.”

Healthcare is an especially big target because it represents “low-hanging fruit,” Stafford said. Patient data not only is plentiful, it’s also timeless, making it much more valuable for hackers.

“If you have a credit card and it gets stolen, all the account information gets wiped, you get a new credit card and you go back to work,” he said. “The problem is, when you get your healthcare data stolen, hackers can keep using it.”

With that in mind, Stafford said organizations must be better stewards of data.