Essay on Cyber Insecurity in Hospitals: Global Challenges for Healthcare Access

Introduction

Hospitals across the globe are facing organisational challenges. Some of these challenges are a consequence of globalization, technology development, and cultural changes among others. These challenges affect the ability of hospitals to offer adequate healthcare services and the ability of patients to access these facilities. Among these challenges is insecurity. The following paper studies online threats to hospitals as challenges facing hospitals.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Cyber Insecurity in Hospitals

Cyber attacks pose a challenge to hospitals due to the use of electronic health records, electronic machines and growth of telemedicine (Coventry & Branley, 2018). Health records contain the medical history of patients. However, they are necessary to link insurers and medical personnel hence enabling these parties to track medical of medical services that patients receive and their costs. However, in the hands of hackers, this information could be used to take steal someone's identity and expose their medical history in contravention of Health Insurance Portability Act (Anderson, 2019). Besides, hackers can sell the information to third parties or even undergo medical procedures at the expense of the patient. Furthermore, hospitals are at risk of suffering from cyber attacks that hold their data at ransom until they pay a ransom. It is also possible for hackers to manipulate medical equipment hence delivering the wrong dosage and results.

Cyber Security Threats

Cybersecurity threats come from various parties. Malicious medical staff can steal patient records such as financial records and credit numbers and make purchases without knowledge of patients. Additionally, staff could sell patient records such as demographic information to third parties. Hospitals are at risk of malware. Malware files get into the hospital system from employees who connect infected devices to hospital equipment such as computers (Bonaci et al., 2015). Furthermore, staff using hospital equipment such as tablets and computers could open links that appear harmless resulting in disruptions and system failure. This attack allows the attacker to access medical records at will and can go on for long without the hospital recognising the problem.

Third-party employees place hospitals risk of cyber attacks (Ulsch, 2014). These employees include outsourced cleaners and security guards. Hospitals cannot often accredit these workers despite their ability to access most parts of the hospital. Additionally, medical personnel that log into the hospital system from their devices or public unsecured devices place hospitals at risk. Once they dispose off their devices, new owners can visit hospital sites and access the information.

Additionally, modern devices transmit information through the internet (Shen et al., 2014). Although this information is to go to approved parties, hackers can tap into the information flow to change the readings. Furthermore, hospitals cannot often dispose of hardware effectively. If this equipment falls into the hands of malicious individuals, they could recover the information.

Effects of Cyber Attacks

Cyber-attacks have devastating consequences. For example, cyber-attacks lead to exposure of confidential patient information (Walsh & Murphy, 2017). This exposure could result in shame and ridicule for patients. In extreme cases, patients could lose their jobs. Ransoming medical equipment and information could lead to patient deaths. Without access to vital information on the state of the patient, doctors cannot know the consequence of their action. This could result in permanent damage and death. Malware on devices could lead to the wrong diagnosis of patients. Patients under the wrong medication could suffer permanent damage to their health and endure pain during surgery and recovery before the right diagnosis.

In addition, cyber-attacks lead to financial losses for hospitals. Hospitals have to compensate victims of cyber attacks (Hassan, 2019). Besides, hospitals lose potential patients who fear to go through a similar experience. Employee theft damages the reputation of employees and the hospital. Therefore, an insecure environment discourages potential employees and donors.

Impact of Cyber Attacks on Nursing

Cyber-attacks could result in job losses for nurses who knowingly sell information to third parties. Also, nurses have to be conscious of how they use their devices. Infected devises that access the hospital system place hospitals at risk. In future, nurses will have to take information technology courses. These courses will enable nurses, learn how to identify and remove malware from hospital equipment. Besides, nurses have to stop relying on medical devices for diagnosis and communication. However, it is possible to deter cyber threats.

Combating Cyber Attacks

To combat cyberattacks, hospitals have to offer training. Through this training, employees understand their role in maintaining hospital records and highlight their importance. All nurses should attend these lessons. Hospitals should create a procedure for using hospital equipment. These procedures define who should access the equipment, what type of information they should access and what to do after identification of a breach. Also, there should be punishments for employees that do not abide by these rules. Hospitals should vet their partners. To this end, security agencies should collaborate with hospitals to provide a list of acceptable vendors.

Besides, hospitals have to ensure they use up to date software. The new software has adequate security features to deter hackers. However, these software providers should have a good record of accomplishment. To ensure this, hospital equipment producers should offer upgrades to hospitals and where they lack the ability, they should refer to capable vendors.

Development of technology places medical equipment in the face of attacks. These could either be employees, vendors or hackers. These attacks could either be malware, hacking, hoarding information. However, to avoid deaths, financial losses and damage hospitals have to collaborate with security agencies and producers to secure equipment.

References

Anderson, C. L. (2019). undefined. Journal of Legal Medicine, 39(3), 263-277. https://doi.org/10.1080/01947648.2019.1653695

Bonaci, T., Yan, J., Herron, J., Kohno, T., & Chizeck, H. J. (2015). Experimental analysis of denial-of-service attacks on teleoperated robotic systems. Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Sixth International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems - ICCPS '15. https://doi.org/10.1145/2735960.2735980

Coventry, L., & Branley, D. (2018). Cybersecurity in healthcare: A narrative review of trends, threats and ways forward. Maturitas, 113, 48-52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.maturitas.2018.04.008

Hassan, N. A. (2019). Enterprise defense strategies against ransomware attacks. Ransomware Revealed, 115-154. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4255-1_5

Shen, H., Ma, D., Zhao, Y., Sun, H., Sun, S., Ye, R., Huang, L., Lang, B., & Sun, Y. (2014). MIAPS: A web-based system for remotely accessing and presenting medical images. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, 113(1), 266-283. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmpb.2013.09.008

Ulsch, M. (2014). Cyber threat!: how to manage the growing risk of cyber attacks. John Wiley & Sons.

Walsh, I., & Murphy, P. (2017). Healtheatre: Drama and medicine in concert. Healthcare, 5(3), 37. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare5030037