3 experts lay out tactics to help hospitals combat ransomware attacks

Cyberattacks against healthcare facilities, such as the WannaCry ransomware attack in May, are becoming a debilitating issue for hospitals. Three medical and legal experts discussed how hospitals can prevent and respond to these types of attacks in an article published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Eli Adashi, MD, professor of medical science and former dean of medicine and biological sciences at Providence, R.I.-based Brown University; I. Glenn Cohen, professor of law at Boston-based Harvard University; and Sharona Hoffman, professor of law and bioethics at Case Western Reserve University, shared their expertise.

The article authors examined research that included nearly 2,000 hospital data breaches between 2009 and 2016.

Some simple steps to prevent cyberattacks include conducting workforce training, retaining employees who are knowledgeable about cybersecurity, updating operating systems regularly and reporting attacks to authorities.

Additionally, the authors suggest the U.S. government develop a cohesive  response and provide guidelines to hospitals. Also, agencies such as The Joint Commission could make cybersecurity requirements a high priority for achieving accreditation or reaccreditation.

Finally, the authors say healthcare organizations should never pay the ransom hackers demand. However, they caution all the aforementioned steps should only be implemented after public discussion.

Healthcare stakeholders should also remember, while they can take steps to reduce the risk, "it is very hard to perfect IT security, especially given the needs of modern hospital systems to have things moving between places and increasing demand for patient-facing access," said Professor Cohen.

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