The synergy between UEM and medical device risk management

Firstly of 2023, in response to IBM Safety’s “Threat Intelligence Index” report, healthcare was within the prime 10 most-attacked industries on the planet. The “Cost of a Data Breach 2023” report additionally uncovered that, since 2020, healthcare information breach prices have elevated by 53.3%. Even when it adheres to quite a lot of regulatory practices, for the thirteenth yr in a row, the healthcare trade reported the costliest information breaches, at a mean value of USD 10.93 million. 58% of incidents had been primarily based in Europe, with North American circumstances comprising the rest at 42%.

Unified endpoint management (UEM) and medical gadget threat administration ideas go side-by-side to create a strong cybersecurity posture that streamlines gadget administration and ensures the security and reliability of medical units utilized by medical doctors and nurses at their on a regular basis jobs. UEM is a sort of know-how that helps handle and safe quite a lot of endpoints, together with cell units used within the healthcare ecosystem. These endpoints also can embody medical units or purpose-built units.

Trendy UEM suppliers develop options with a excessive diploma of usability and will present one platform for overseeing the deployment, safety and efficiency of those units, managing the product lifecycle and the appliance lifecycle. Some UEM options additionally embody threat evaluation capabilities—together with AI-powered threat evaluation and fast threat analysis—which might assist match throughout the trade’s regulatory necessities and carry out real-time mitigation of potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

Among the fundamental benefits UEM brings to the businesses within the healthcare trade are:

• Visibility: UEM provides real-time visibility into the linked medical units, enabling healthcare suppliers to watch their standing, efficiency, and safety. This helps the chance management and limits the likelihood of the prevalence of knowledge leaks or cyberattacks.
• Easy deployment: Utilizing UEM options, healthcare suppliers can deploy extra simpler medical units corresponding to tablets utilized by medical doctors and nurses, configuring them in bulk or individually in response to the safety insurance policies. One of many fundamental objectives is acquiring a frictionless relationship with finish customers, thus considering the person wants by default.
• Safety Administration: UEM gives strong safety insurance policies and capabilities, together with encrypted containers, single sign-on, identity management, wipe/ distant wipe, and lots of extra. The safety capabilities could embody devoted threat administration insurance policies, primarily based on real-world trade finest practices and regulatory necessities, defending each the affected person information and healthcare suppliers’ information.

Medical Gadget Danger Administration is prioritizing affected person security by rigorous methodology and threat management. 

1.  Affected person Security: Making certain that mobile medical units are protected and dependable is a should. Danger administration processes assist establish potential sources of hurt and take preventive and protecting measures to attenuate affected person dangers.

2.  Data Security: In our days, medical units are interconnected and information safety has change into extraordinarily vital. Medical Gadget Danger Administration methods include cybersecurity measures, together with particular threat administration actions to guard affected person information and forestall a possible prevalence of hurt corresponding to information leaks or information loss.

3.  Regulatory Compliance: Identical to healthcare organizations, medical gadget producers should adhere to strict regulatory tips, such because the FDA’s High quality System Regulation (QSR). Correct threat analysis, threat administration processes and methodologies, threat administration insurance policies, and threat administration actions are paramount for compliance.

4.  Life cycle Administration: Managing all the lifecycle of medical units, together with procurement, deployment, and upkeep, is a part of threat administration. That is in step with UEM’s core capabilities of managing the product life cycle, for each units and apps.

There’s a clear alignment between UEM and medical gadget threat administration. UEM gives a part of the required capabilities for implementing strong threat administration methodologies and threat administration processes throughout the wider cybersecurity technique for the healthcare trade:

1.  Visibility and Monitoring: UEM options provide real-time visibility into medical units corresponding to particular tablets utilized by nurses and medical doctors, routinely figuring out and performing mitigation of potential sources of hurt corresponding to safety vulnerabilities and potential cyberattacks.

2.  Coverage Enforcement: UEM permits healthcare suppliers to implement safety insurance policies and configurations constantly throughout all linked units, with automated threat evaluations. These will be aligned and built-in throughout the firm’s threat administration insurance policies. Some UEM options have built-in safety insurance policies that take into management trade regulatory necessities, corresponding to HIPAA (Well being Insurance coverage Portability and Accountability Act).

3.  Fast Response: Within the occasion of a safety breach or gadget malfunction or if the gadget was misplaced or stolen, UEM permits real-time responses, corresponding to isolating affected units or initiating distant updates and patches. The cybersecurity viewpoint is that the likelihood of prevalence of cyber threats or assaults is extraordinarily excessive and that there are not any acceptable ranges of publicity. UEM helps include the enterprise threat related to cyber threats by risk-based, automatized responses.

4.  Knowledge Safety: By means of UEM, delicate information will be encrypted and guarded, guaranteeing compliance with information privateness laws. Trendy UEM know-how suppliers cowl each USA and European information privateness legal guidelines, to assist IT groups within the healthcare trade stay productive and environment friendly. Constructed-in identification and entry administration (IAM) options and integration with IAM applied sciences are a should, to create management measures of what person can entry which data.

5. Danger Evaluation: Any medical threat administration framework specifies methodologies for threat evaluation. UEM suppliers have built-in analytics, a few of them powered by AI, which routinely assesses in real-time and with granularity the person threat related to sure occasions. These cybersecurity threat evaluation options additionally specifies the measures the IT groups have to take to carry out correct threat management, in step with the chance administration insurance policies arrange by the corporate and assist streamline the decision-making. This will span from stakeholders’ responses to SMS phishing to patches not put in or working techniques that haven’t been up to date. Cybersecurity’s viewpoint has all the time been that no threat ought to be handed over, so medical units and app safety ought to be on the agendas of groups who design controls and create complete threat administration processes.

In conclusion, the number of medical units in healthcare, corresponding to cell units for nurses and medical doctors, and cyberthreats that are on the rise, be sure that the intersection between UEM applied sciences and Medical Gadget Danger Administration ought to be a part of any threat administration course of in a healthcare firm. This synergy not solely ensures the security of affected person information but in addition protects delicate healthcare information, mitigates enterprise dangers, and will increase the stakeholders’ satisfaction. Cybersecurity threat assessments can consider the likelihood of prevalence of cyberattacks that might include phishing, ransomware, backdoor assaults, and net shells, and ought to be a part of the event means of a complete threat administration course of. The AI-powered threat evaluation capabilities that some UEM suppliers provide are a part of the cybersecurity assessments and may change into an vital a part of the agenda of any crew that designs controls for the healthcare trade. The last word purpose is to create a holistic, high-level high quality of look after sufferers in a an increasing number of interconnected healthcare ecosystem.

IBM Security MaaS360 is a contemporary, superior unified endpoint management platform that helps adjust to healthcare regulatory necessities and compliance insurance policies corresponding to HIPAA/HITECH, enhance information safety, scale back the pressure on the IT workload, and decrease the price of managing cell units. MaaS360 has an AI-powered engine that does automated person threat analysis in order that IT groups can proactively carry out mitigation of vulnerabilities and cyber dangers.

Learn more about IBM Security MaaS360