TRENDS
BY MARK THILL
‘How Secure is Your Device?’ Connected devices and equipment can be an entranceway for hackers
The revelation was like something out of a spy novel. In October 2013, former Vice President Dick Cheney and his cardiologist, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, told “60 Minutes” that when Cheney got a heart defibrillator in 2007, Reiner ordered the manufacturer to disable the wireless feature, to prevent would-be hackers from interfering with the device and shocking Cheney into cardiac arrest.
WannaCry
provider, and former cybersecurity
healthcare providers have become com-
In the first half of 2020 alone, the
program manager in the U.S. Food and
mon, and medical devices are now being
Department of Health and Human
Drug Administration’s Center for De-
scrutinized not only because of the pos-
Services saw a nearly 50% increase
vices and Radiological Health (CDRH).
sibility of hackers interfering with them
in the number of healthcare-related
The healthcare industry’s cyber risk
to hurt or kill people, but because devices
cybersecurity breaches, writes cyberse-
exposure is weak, he says.
can be used to “open the floodgates” for
curity expert Seth Carmody in a recent
hackers to gain access to electronic medi-
article in HIT Consultant. Carmody is
Medical device evaluation firm ECRI
cal records, personal patient information,
vice president of regulatory strategy
pointed to cybersecurity challenges as
even providers’ financial systems.
for MedCrypt, a healthcare security
one of its Top 10 Health Technology
Since then, ransomware attacks on
12
November 2021 | The Journal of Healthcare Contracting
