Modern cyberattacks have in large become heavily automated. That means criminals are simply deploying self-running programs and viruses to target, attack and compromise networks. Their biggest target in 2018? Hospitals and healthcare. Because hospitals are stewards of some of the most valuable data on earth (cough cough…. Medical Records), you are the most at risk for falling victim to a cyberattack or data breach.
And if you think you’ll be able to defend against attack manually? You’re going to be fighting man against machine (or an army of machines). You probably understand that manually fighting cybersecurity against machines is like bailing out your sinking boat with a teaspoon.
To successfully protect against automated attacks, you’re probably going to want to fight fire with fire. In this case, machine with machine—by integrating automation into your cybersecurity strategy.
You see, automation levels the playing field. It reduces the volumes of threats your organization is at risk of having to fight off and it allows for faster prevention of previously unknown threats (think all of the Microsoft patch releases that you may not have gotten to yet—the very patches hacker are using to break through hospital networks).
Many security experts look toward automation as both a way to streamline activity around cybersecurity—especially in areas that require routine or rote activities.
Today I want to talk about some simple steps your hospital should consider to automate parts of your cybersecurity stack. Disclaimer—while automation makes the world of difference when it comes to keeping your data secure from cybercriminals, understanding your network and how that automation works is essential to effectively protecting your data, patients and teams.
Automate your infrastructure buildouts
You probably at minimum have hundreds of computers on your hospital network. That means every time an update happens, you are likely having to run around like a chicken with its head cut off just to make sure that updates have been applied to every single computer or device. If you buildout infrastructure manually, you likely have to make sure all sorts of settings are set precisely (leaving a LOT of errors if not done right).
By determining what specifics your environment will require and automating and pushing out updates, settings and other essential requirements, you not only save your team time doing relatively low level busy work, but you have more acute control over maintaining a clean environment and preventing errors from giving cybercriminals doorways to penetrate and lock down your network.
If you only have the capacity to automate one thing, infrastructure buildout will likely have the biggest long term payout. Automating it eliminates countless errors.
Eliminate manually checking physical and virtual instances
In most traditional IT practices, eliminating vulnerabilities—especially those that give way to major cyberattacks—is top of mind. But actually implementing a way to eliminate those vulnerabilities in a completely different story.
For hospitals where we have helped automate their environments—especially related to different instances within their environments—keeping tabs on new threats and improving their systems to compensate for those vulnerabilities is completely doable. If you had to rely on manually applying updates or pushing out fixes by hand to even a couple hundred machines, your team may never get around to finishing the job (leaving you exposed to major security threats).
By utilizing script resources that help configure workstations and servers, apply patches and fix issues, you are eliminating top security issues without having to invest countless hours. You essentially are freeing up more time to devote to understanding new threats, and eliminating your list of current threats in order to better prepare for what’s to come.
Fully automate your deployments
Let’s face it. Most IT Directors and hospital IT teams are really busy. Automating deployments is one of the first processes many IT leadership see as critically helpful maintaining their networks. But most leaders don’t realize that automated deployments also improve network security.
Deployment automation makes it so that your IT team can respond to a rogue script sweeping through your network with equally as much speed. Automated deployment makes it possible for a single engineer to respond to a major security threat quickly without having to manually reboot anything.
Automated security monitoring
Let’s face it, most of us are fighting fires all day long. That is, users call our offices and expect their issues to be fixed ASAP. That doesn’t exactly leave a lot of time in the day to worry about all the other stuff—including making sure nothing is fishy on the network.
More often than not, cyberattacks could have been detected from the onset if only someone had been looking. If only you had enough time to effectively monitor and scrape your network for irregularities and identify and eliminate cybersecurity problems, data breaches and ransomware attacks before they turned into full blown emergencies (and often countless weeks of traumatic recovery).
Automated monitoring could be the difference between your hospital recovering from an attack or going out of business (trust me, I’ve seen this happen!).
Is Your Hospital Prepared?
Will you be able to withstand having your files locked down? Do you even know where to specifically automate and what to automate to keep your network secure? Contact us today for a free ransomware vulnerability assessment to start putting together your 2019 security roadmap.
