Tag: cyber security

Medical care facilities have expressed apprehension over risks associated with smartphone cybersecurity.

Hospital mobile security is a concern with increasing priority in medical facilities. The use of mobile technology has made it possible to enjoy many meaningful advantages in hospitals. Nurses can communicate more quickly, care team members – including doctors – can communicate more effectively, care can be more effectively coordinated, and workflows are more efficient.

That said, this platform may be convenient and helpful, but it opens system to cybersecurity risks.

A survey of 100 hospital IT and informatics executives by Spyglass Consulting Group provided insight on this topic. The firm is located in Menlo Park, California and specializes in market research and consultancy. The participants provided a solid representation of the 2,500 hospitals across the United States with over 200 beds. The research looked into hospital mobile security with in-house technology. It examined the level of protection and concern in place. The protection was regarding patient data, the mobile devices themselves and the technology infrastructure of the hospitals.

The research revealed that hospital mobile security is a large concern despite the benefits of the tech.

Managing director and founder of Spyglass, Gregg Malkary, said “Smartphone technology has really taken on a serious role as to how it fits into clinical communication, but every time you integrate systems, there are points where the data is in the clear, and where it is vulnerable.”

The mobile security survey examined the way connected devices such as tablets and smartphones could place a hospital’s IT infrastructure and network at risk of cyberattack. Attacks included: malware, blastware and ransomware. It took into account both devices personally owned by medical practitioners and devices owned and managed by the hospitals themselves.

The survey showed the largest concerns and issues in hospital mobile security. Personally owned devices commonly contained inadequate password protection. Furthermore, they were not satisfactorily protected with security software. They typically relied on SMS messaging that was not secured in order to communicate with other clinic team members. Many of those communications included sharing patient health information. This exposed that information to access by unintended recipients.

As a rising number of people use their smartphones to make purchases, cyber criminals will up their efforts, too.

According to the results of a recent survey, most cyber security experts (87 percent) now feel that as mobile payments become more popular over the next 12 months, it will also bring about a rise in the number of associated data breaches.

Equally, 42 percent of surveyed cyber security experts had also already used that transaction method this year.

The survey involved the participation of 900 experts in cyber security. It was conducted by ISACA and it suggested that mobile payments are likely to progress without any real barrier from security concerns. Among the respondents to this survey, only 23 percent said that they felt that smartphone payments were actually a safe way to store personal information. Another 47 percent said that they felt that this type of transaction is entirely unsecure. An additional 30 percent of respondents said that they were unsure as to whether or not the transactions were secure.

Regardless of the risk that is associated with security, it looks as though mobile payments are moving ahead.

Nearly 89 percent felt that cash remains the most secure way for payments transactions to be completed, today. That said, only 9 percent of the respondents said that this was their preferred method of payment.

The ISACA survey participants were asked to provide their opinions with regards to the types of vulnerabilities that could be associated with using smartphones to complete payments transactions. Among them, the mobile security concerns that were identified were:

• WiFi – 26 percent
• Loss or theft of the smartphone – 21 percent
• Shmishing (text message phishing)/phishing – 18 percent
• Weak password protection – 13 percent
• User/human error – 7 percent

The report also indicated that mobile payments based on contactless and NFC technology will be continuing their growth. As a whole, the marketplace for these transactions is predicted by Future Market Insights to be worth $2.8 trillion in five years. The cyber security experts felt that the best way to boost the security of the transactions is to use two authentication methods (66 percent) and to require a short-term authentication code (18 percent).