The healthcare industry, especially within the Asia-Pacific region, has been the victim of a number of cyber attacks and data breaches within the last six months alone. In just one attack against Australian healthcare and insurance provider Medibank, the personal information of 9.7 million people was stolen and thousands had their private medical details posted online.
In this exclusive interview, Cyber Security Hub speaks with Jojo Nufable, group IT infrastructure and cyber security head at Metro Pacific Health Solutions, about why cyber resilience is integral to the security offering of those in the healthcare industry.
Cyber Security Hub: Why is cyber resilience so important to the healthcare industry?
Jojo Nufable: Cyber resilience is important to the healthcare industry, especially for hospitals and healthcare providers, as they are dealing with human lives and wellness. Cyber resilience ensures that those in the healthcare industry have the ability to anticipate, withstand, recover and adapt to adverse conditions, stresses, attacks or compromises on systems that use or are enabled by cyber resources.
Cyber resiliency in the event of a cyber attack, for example a data breach attempt in Protective Health Information (PHI) or a ransomware attack launched against the Hospital Information System and Electronic Medical Record (HIS/EMR), would make sure that the right incident detection, response and recovery process is in place. This would allow for continuous healthcare business operations and ensure that patients’ medical records were not compromised, ultimately preventing this confidential information from being used for criminal activities.
“Cyber resilience ensures that those in the healthcare industry have the ability to anticipate, withstand, recover and adapt to adverse conditions, stresses, attacks or compromises on systems that use or are enabled by cyber resources.” – Jojo Nufable
CSH: Why is threat intelligence so important in achieving cyber resilience?
JN: Threat Intelligence is important in achieving cyber resilience as it encourages the use of applying best practice, paving the way for cyber security teams to see threats and risks before they are realized. This is the best course of action as it means they are able to remediate before an attack is in full swing. Threat intelligence also helps to minimize false positive and high noise feeds of security event and information and streamlines threat response by having an adaptive and agile incident response management system.
CSH: What is the most important thing for companies to consider when implementing threat intelligence programs for improved cybersecurity resilience?
JN: The most important thing for healthcare companies to consider when implementing threat intelligence programs is having actionable intelligence and predictive analytics capability. This allows for proactive risk mitigation and gap remediation for the purpose of having the right adaptive detection, response and recover management system in-place.
