HIMSSCast: Steps hospitals can take to protect medical device cyberattcks

Aug 16, 2023

Photo: Tetra/Getty Images

Mark Bowling, chief risk, security, and information security officer at ExtraHop, has years of cybersecurity experience as a former FBI field executive, a nuclear engineering officer with the Navy and in various CISO roles. He knows the ins and outs of incident response, how the bad guys think and the vulnerabilities left open by hospitals.

Medical devices are susceptible to cyberattacks, but what's vulnerable is not the device itself, but the native operating system on which the device is built, Bowling said. One scary statistic is that 53% of medical devices have known vulnerabilities that are published and easily available to cybercriminals.

In this conversation with Healthcare Finance News' Executive Editor Susan Morse, Bowling talks about how health systems and hospitals can protect themselves and their patients.

Talking points:

More about this episode:

Medical devices are inherently vulnerable to security breaches

Clinicians need the right messaging to pay attention to cybersecurity

Tips on medical device security from the product leaders' perspective

CISA warns of Medtronic cardiac device security vulnerability

Navigating the new medical device security law

Twitter: @SusanJMorseEmail the writer: [email protected]