Far too often I hear healthcare CIOs talk about all of the various electronic devices they have in their organization and how this device proliferation has created a really large risk surface that makes their organization vulnerable to breaches and other nefarious actions. This is true to some extent since organizations now have things like:
- Servers
- Desktops
- Mobile Devices
- Network Devices
- Internet Access
- Medical Devices
- Internet of Thing Devices
- etc
As tech progresses, the number of devices we have in our healthcare organizations is only going to continue to grow. No doubt this can pose a challenge to any Chief Security Officer (CSO). However, I actually think this is the easiest part of a CSO’s job when it comes to making sure a healthcare organization is secure. I think it’s much harder to make sure the people in your organization are acting in a way that doesn’t compromise your organization’s security.
As one hospital CIO told me, “I’m most concerned with the 21,000 security vulnerabilities that existed in my organization. I’m talking about the 21,000 employees.”
Granted, this CIO worked at a very large organization. However, I think he’s right. Creating a security plan for a device is pretty easily accomplished. It will never be perfect, but you can put together a really good, effective plan. People are wild cards. It’s much harder to keep them from doing something that compromises your organization. Especially since the hackers have gotten so pernicious and effective in the tactics they use.
At the end of the day, I look at security as similar to child proofing your house when you have a young child. You’ll never make it 100% completely safe, but you can really mitigate most of the issues that could cause harm to your child. The same is true in your approach to securing your healthcare organization. You can never ensure you won’t have any security incidents, but you can mitigate a lot of the really dangerous things. Then, you just have to deal with the times something surprising happens. Now if we would just care as much about keeping our healthcare organizations secure as we do keeping our children safe, then we’d be in a much better place.
