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In today’s technological environment, healthcare firms are under greater threat of cybercrimes than ever before. Because there has been increased storage of patients’ data through electronic systems, there is increased vulnerability to breaches and cyber-attacks. A lot of revelation about the healthcare industry, penetration testing is not just a gimmick, it is an essential tool. By practicing on their systems, healthcare providers can be able to pinpoint areas that hackers can exploit before they get hacked.
But what does it mean when it comes to this process? Why has it been deemed so important for health care? But where does Prancer come in? This article will answer these questions and more and provide insight into why penetration testing is crucial for healthcare and how the use of automated penetration testing can change the industry.
To begin with, let’s define what the penetration testing is before discussing the details of the penetration testing in healthcare. Penetration testing can therefore be thought of as a ‘fire drill’ for your digital systems. While a fire drill is a way to point out flaws in a building’s evacuation strategy, penetration testing is the same for your technological network.
Penetration testing is trying to attack a computer system to assess possible weaknesses. In the context of healthcare, it means learning the vulnerabilities of electronic health records, patient management systems and other key infrastructures. The objective is to identify threats that may be lurking and could in future cause problems.
The health care sector arguably stores perhaps the most personal data possible of individual patients. From patient’s medical records to insurance information, the information that is accumulated by the healthcare organizations is most valued by the hackers. This makes penetration testing for healthcare not only desirable but inevitable.
This is the case because over the recent past, the healthcare industry has been one of the most targeted industries by hackers. Ransomware, phishing, and data breaches are on the rise every day. The impacts of these attacks are dire, this includes loss of revenue, patient confidentiality breach among others. These risks are however managed by penetration testing since it involves early assessment of risks in the system.
It is therefore expected for patients to provide their personal information and have it protected by a healthcare provider. Confidential information can undermine this trust thus affecting reputation and sometimes involving legal consequences. As such, through regular penetration testing, healthcare providers can be well armed in the fight against the theft of patient data.
Penetration testing or pen-testing, as it is commonly abbreviated, should always form part of any good cybersecurity plan. But let’s understand how this concept plays out, particularly in the sphere of healthcare?
All these tests are very important in the achievement of total security in a healthcare organization.
As such, Prancer’s automated testing tools can easily be incorporated into existing health care systems and are always on to monitor the systems and send alerts when necessary. Such strategies enable institutions to prevent risks that might be exploited by different people in society.
Again, the healthcare systems are very large and with this comes the fact that there are many weaknesses that one can identify. It is therefore important that we acquaint ourselves with these vulnerabilities to minimize them.
The effects of exploiting such weaknesses are not uncommon and can lead to such things as data leaks and degradation of patient services. It is therefore crucial to conduct penetration testing for health care systems to help discover these problems frequently.
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Penetration testing in healthcare systems is detailed and has several crucial phases.
As is evident, the healthcare industry is one of the most highly regulated industries, and penetration testing for healthcare must meet legal and regulatory standards.
Despite the importance of Penetration testing in healthcare, it is also associated with certain difficulties.
Limited Resources: Due to the financial constraints health care organizations have most often inadequate IT budgets which cannot support overall penetration testing investments.
Resistance to Change: There can be a reluctance to agree to penetration testing as it may interfere with patients’ care or expose defects in important systems.
Therefore, the following factors are bound to feature prominently in the future of penetration testing to healthcare.
The augmentation of finesse in automated penetration testing will become of the essence as health care systems evolve in the future. Automation tools will enable healthcare organizations to check their systems frequently and more effectively, minimizing breach likelihood.
Penetration testing is one of the fields that are poised to witness the adoption of AI and machine learning technologies in future. They can also be used to detect patterns and abnormalities that would suggest that there might be a weakness and therefore are effective tools for testing.
The traditional model of penetration testing that takes place over a set time period will be replaced by the ongoing assessment. This approach will enable the healthcare organizations to note the weaknesses and work towards mitigating them in real time thus increasing security.
Healthcare penetration testing is not simply a technical requirement, but the requirement for safeguarding patients’ information and sustaining patient confidence. Unfortunately, cyber threats are ever changing and thus there is need for healthcare organizations to always check for any gaps in the system and ensure that they are not easily exploitable. Thanks to the development of automated penetration testing, this process became much more effective and easy which means that healthcare providers have no excuse not to protect their systems.
In this environment, Prancer performs a critical function of providing targeted advice and guidance to healthcare organizations with a view to assisting them in addressing the challenges that exist within the sphere of cybersecurity. Using Prancer’s automated tools enables healthcare providers to be confident that all necessary measures are being taken to ensure the confidentiality of patient data and compliance with the law’s requirements.
