A new report from software review platform Capterra found that healthcare organizations with more than 70 percent of their medical devices connected were 24 percent more likely to experience a cyberattack than practices with 50 percent or fewer connected devices.
Healthcare IT professionals need to update patches in connected medical devices as soon as possible to help prevent cyberattacks. According to a Nov. 29 Capterra news release, 68 percent of healthcare organizations don't always update connected devices when a patch is available.
"As a healthcare organization connects more medical devices to its network, its attack surface expands," Zach Capers, a senior security analyst at Capterra, said. "Connected medical devices often go unmonitored for security vulnerabilities, and because they run on a wide array of software and hardware platforms, it's difficult to monitor with a single tool. This means that many connected medical devices are left wide open to cyberattacks."