Oct 5, 2023

Healthcare cybersecurity Richard Staynings, Chief Security Strategist, discusses the challenges facing healthcare cybersecurity & how Cylera's IoT security can protect it Cylera leads IoT Security and Intelligence to protect people and businesses. The company was founded in 2017 and is based in New York. Chief Security Strategist Richard Staynings is an author, public speaker and advocate for improved cybersecurity across the Healthcare and Life Sciences industry and has over 25 years’ experience of both cybersecurity leadership and client consulting. Here, he shares his knowledge on cybersecurity in healthcare and how the industry can protect itself. Hello Richard! How do the priorities around cybersecurity in healthcare differ globally? “The Healthcare industry in every country faces unique and many cases similar challenges. Vertical demand for health services is ubiquitous yet a patient’s ability to pay for such medical services individually, via health insurance, or collectively via public health is extremely limited. “Indeed, public health systems like the NHS are, according to some reports , on the verge of collapse as a lack of trained clinicians and chronic shortfall in funding exacerbate already long wait lists for elective procedures. This reduces public confidence in the public health system, further eroding its breakdown as patients go elsewhere as the system crashes. “All western health systems face an existential crisis over the next two decades as an ageing population of baby boomers retires and consumes ever increasing levels of health services as they age. At the same time, fewer people participate in the workforce thanks to more years spent in education and earlier retirement, resulting in lower lifetime contributions to taxes and health insurance thus reducing available revenues for providers. “In the US, many of those who lived their whole lives with inadequate access to healthcare are similarly reaching retirement age and becoming Medicare eligible. They present decades of untreated chronic diseases and consume a large proportion of the entire Medicare budget. Indeed, the treatment of compound chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, heart, cancer, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease consumes nearly 96% of the entire Medicare budget today leaving very little for those in better health and very little for cybersecurity. More than one in four Americans have multiple chronic conditions (MCC). “The fact of the matter is that healthcare has underinvested in cybersecurity for decades and has accrued an almost massive level of technical debt as new innovative healthcare technologies have been implemented without a corresponding level of cybersecurity investment to protect these and other new technologies. This is known as the ‘Maturity Paradox’ and is one of the reasons why healthcare is being hit so hard by cyberattacks compared to other industries. Richard Staynings, Chief Security Strategist at Cylera