{"id":15304,"date":"2021-08-27T10:17:10","date_gmt":"2021-08-27T04:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cigniti.com\/blog\/?p=15304"},"modified":"2023-12-19T16:40:55","modified_gmt":"2023-12-19T11:10:55","slug":"healthcare-cyber-security-zero-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cigniti.com\/blog\/healthcare-cyber-security-zero-trust\/","title":{"rendered":"Zero Trust Security in Healthcare: Managing Cyber Risks"},"content":{"rendered":"

No sector seems to be immune as cyberattacks continue to increase. Healthcare and retail verticals have been hackers’ focus areas during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

While hospitals have been burdened with the onslaught of patients and research labs racing to develop vaccines for COVID-19, they have become soft targets for cyberattacks. They were even willing to pay vast ransoms to ensure business continuity as the stakes were high.<\/p>\n

According to Forrester<\/em><\/strong>, \u201cHealthcare provider organizations (HPOs) can no longer rely on legacy security controls to prevent threat actors from stealing or ransoming patient data. A healthcare ecosystem of remote caregiving and thinly-defended medical IoT devices requires a cyber risk management strategy based on the Zero Trust security model<\/em><\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

As applications and workloads are aggressively moving to the cloud with users accessing them remotely, the network is no longer a secured enterprise network but has become an unsecured internet.<\/p>\n

The visibility solutions and network perimeter security businesses employ to keep attackers out of the scene are no longer robust or practical enough.<\/p>\n

According to Mark Nicholson<\/em><\/strong>, a principal and a cyber risk services leader at Deloitte<\/em><\/strong>, \u201cNot a specific architecture, zero trust is an approach to security that has evolved in response to the changing nature of networks. Twenty years ago, we hardened the exterior of the network with layers of defenses and believed we could trust everyone and every device on the inside. Now, data and assets have left the premises. It can be ambiguous where the organization\u2019s domain ends and the public domain begins. Clearly defined access control policies based on user, device, and service profiles are central to any zero-trust strategy.<\/em><\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

Zero Trust Model in Healthcare Can Keep Pace with The Threat Landscape<\/h2>\n

While healthcare data is valuable and critical for patient treatment, it has been and will be a primary target for cyberattacks. Given the health sector\u2019s challenges, such as limited resources and staffing gaps, the need for clinical zero trust will be crucial moving forward.<\/p>\n

Ideally, a zero-trust infrastructure can remediate issues related to authentication, authorization, credential theft, and a heavy reliance on virtual private networks (VPNs). But with limited resources and staffing, how feasible would a zero trust model be in the healthcare sector?<\/p>\n

Zero trust was designed in response to business trends where cloud-based assets and remote users are not located directly within the enterprise network.<\/p>\n

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)<\/em><\/strong>, \u201cA zero trust architecture (ZTA) uses zero trust principles to plan enterprise infrastructure and workflows. Zero trust assumes no implicit trust is granted to assets or user accounts based solely on their physical or network location (i.e., local area networks versus the internet).<\/em><\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

Authentication and authorization (both user and device) are discrete functions performed before a session for an enterprise resource is established. Zero trust focuses on protecting resources, not network segments, as the network location is no longer seen as the prime component in the security posture of the help.<\/p>\n

While the zero-trust model in healthcare can keep pace with the threat landscape, taking a zero-trust approach to security is vital.<\/p>\n

Taking a Zero Trust Approach to Security<\/h2>\n

In the event of a breach, apart from patient data, healthcare organizations also stand to lose sensitive and private data such as medical device or serial numbers, social security numbers, medical history, images with unique identifying characteristics, biometric data, and X-rays & diagnostic images.<\/p>\n

Assuming all communication within the network is authorized and safe, most healthcare organizations have traditional cyber security assurance<\/a> systems that rely on protecting the perimeter using firewalls. Threat actors take advantage of this assumption by using sophisticated attack vectors like malware, phishing, ransomware, and zero-day attacks to enter the network.<\/p>\n

Digital transformation, cloud computing, and remote work have reduced traditional security barriers. The technologies that enable Zero Trust are becoming more common.<\/p>\n

Based on the premise that no connection is trusted unless explicitly allowed, implementing a zero-trust security architecture could be the most reliable action to defend against internal and external threats.<\/p>\n

Zero Trust is a robust management and guiding principle that assists organizations in preventing data breaches and safeguarding their assets by presuming that no one can be trusted.<\/p>\n

Zero trust security can be implemented using micro-segmentation defined by software. This will enable organizations to have complete visibility of all network traffic across hybrid cloud and other environments. Healthcare organizations can drive intent-based security policies to the host level by segmenting individual workloads, applications, and users.<\/p>\n

This approach will allow specific access to every application or person connected to the network based on the organization’s security policies. Any attempt to access unauthorized data by hackers will be flagged and prevented.<\/p>\n

Taking a zero-trust approach to security is imperative, and knowing how to implement zero-trust is critical.<\/p>\n

How to implement zero trust security in healthcare<\/h2>\n

There are various ways to the model, but there are a few factors that practically everyone must address to design an effective Zero Trust architecture:<\/p>\n

Consider the technologies you\u2019ll need to add to your present stack, such as a<\/p>\n