‘Cybersecurity has become a full-time job’ in healthcare

If 2015 was supposed to be the “year of the hack” in healthcare, cybercriminals really were just getting started. This year, we have seen the rise of ransomware targeting healthcare organizations, plus continued phishing attacks and even some good, old-fashioned laptop theft. Then, on Oct. 21, hackers unleashed a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on the East Coast, effectively shutting down access for millions to popular sites, including Twitter, Spotify, PayPal, Netflix and Comcast. According to Ilya Braude, vice president of technology at digital health consulting firm Medullan in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the attacks infected Internet of Things devices with malware. “It didn’t target a specific product,” Braude said. “It attacked Internet infrastructure.” That could have huge implications for healthcare, which is just starting to embrace the IoT.