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Cybersecurity in Hospitals: A Systematic, Organizational Perspective.

Mohammad S JalaliJessica P Kaiser
Published in: Journal of medical Internet research (2018)
To enhance cybersecurity capabilities at hospitals, the main focus of chief information officers and chief information security officers should be on reducing end point complexity and improving internal stakeholder alignment. These strategies can solve cybersecurity problems more effectively than blindly pursuing more resources. On a macro level, the cyber vulnerability of a country's hospital infrastructure is affected by the vulnerabilities of all individual hospitals. In this large system, reducing variation in resource availability makes the whole system less vulnerable-a few hospitals with low resources for cybersecurity threaten the entire infrastructure of health care. In other words, hospitals need to move forward together to make the industry less attractive to cybercriminals. Moreover, although compliance is essential, it does not equal security. Hospitals should set their target level of cybersecurity beyond the requirements of current regulations and policies. As of today, policies mostly address data privacy, not data security. Thus, policy makers need to introduce policies that not only raise the target level of cybersecurity capabilities but also reduce the variability in resource availability across the entire health care system.
Keyphrases
  • healthcare
  • public health
  • global health
  • health information
  • mental health
  • big data
  • electronic health record
  • climate change
  • machine learning