How Real-Time Threat Intelligence Improves Healthcare IoT Device Security

It’s no secret that healthcare is becoming increasingly interconnected. In the past, only computers were connected to the Internet. However, with today's Internet of Things (IoT), even medical devices—ranging from infusion pumps to smart monitors to MRI machines—are all online. While this level of connection offers better patient care and helps streamline hospital operations, it also opens up the door to a wide variety of cybersecurity threats.

Real-time threat intelligence is the answer to proactively detecting and facing these threats head-on. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how real-time threat intelligence improves medical device security and helps healthcare organizations strengthen their cybersecurity posture. 

What is Real-Time Threat Intelligence?

Real-time threat intelligence involves collecting, analyzing, and sharing data about cyber threats as they happen. This dynamic, real-time approach helps healthcare organizations detect, assess, and respond to potential threats immediately. 

The real-time threat intelligence offered by cutting-edge platforms like Cylera is designed to monitor network traffic and device behavior for anomalies while also understanding the nature and intent of threats and avoiding unnecessary false positives. By integrating intelligence into existing security systems, Cylera makes immediate defensive action and remediation possible. 

Healthcare IoT Security: Unique Challenges Today’s Organizations Face

Healthcare IoT devices face a variety of vulnerabilities and exploits, including:

• Legacy systems:  Many devices run outdated software that is cumbersome to update (if updates are even available)
• Device diversity: A hospital may use hundreds of different IoT devices, each with its own specific security protocol.
• Patient safety risks: A cyberattack on a medical device can endanger lives by rendering the device unavailable, by changing dosages,adjusting data details, or by simply not being available to patients.
• Interconnectivity: Medical devices are often part of larger networks, increasing the attack surface and potentially allowing attackers to compromise additional systems.
• Regulatory compliance: Cybersecurity regulations and standards like HIPAA in the US and the CAF-aligned DSPT in the UK require detailed security measures to protect patient data.

Benefits of Real-Time Threat Intelligence

To address these challenges, real-time threat intelligence from security-focused companies specializing in healthcare IoT is critical to ensure the continual functioning of health services and quality patient care. Real-time threat intelligence offers a number of powerful benefits, including: 

Early Threat Detection

Healthcare IoT devices often show subtle changes in behavior when they’ve been compromised. Real-time threat intelligence enables automated monitoring of devices for  unauthorized access attempts, unusual data transmission, or network traffic patterns that are different from the norm. 

For example, an infusion pump may operate normally—until an attacker potentially attempts to leverage the infusion pump’s connectivity to access the hospital’s financial systems. With real-time monitoring and threat intelligence, this unusual device behavior can be detected and flagged so that IT teams can isolate and mitigate the issue before it expands into a major breach. 

Proactive Defense

Rather than waiting for an attack to occur, real-time threat intelligence through platforms like Cylera, along with integrations with leading firewall and Network Access Control (NAC) solutions enable teams to take proactive measures, including: 

• Blocking malicious IP addresses from accessing IoT devices
• Quarantining devices that show suspicious behavior
• Updating firewall rules to counter emerging threats dynamically

Zero-Day Exploit and Vulnerability Identification

Zero-day vulnerabilities are exploits of unknown or unpatched software flaws. These types of exploits are particularly dangerous for healthcare IoT devices. Real-time threat detection brings together global threat data to identify trends as well as highlight possible zero-day exploits, giving organizations the chance to implement risk mitigation strategies before a patch is released.

Compliance Support

Real-time intelligence helps healthcare providers and organizations comply with data protection regulations by ensuring immediate incident reporting and response while documenting threats and responses, creating an audit trail. It can also provide steps on how to protect sensitive patient data from breaches. 

Improved Incident Response

If an attack does occur, real-time threat intelligence helps improve IT response rates by giving detailed insights into the attack vector, identifying affected devices and systems and offering recommendations for containment and resolution. 

When and How Can Healthcare Organizations Take Advantage of Real-Time Threat Intelligence? 

There are several ways to improve healthcare IoT security. Enabling real-time threat intelligence helps to: 

• Prevent Ransomware: Ransomware attacks on healthcare organizations can severely impact operations and put lives at risk. Real-time notifications detect signs of ransomware activity such as unusual encryption processes or movement within the network, so hospitals can act swiftly. 
• Protect Connected Medical Devices: Critical devices like infusion pumps and ventilators are prone to exploitation. With real-time threat intelligence, any attempts to alter device settings or inject malicious code can be halted, ensuring patient safety. 
• Keep Electronic Health Records (EHR) Secure: EHR systems often work hand-in-hand with IoT devices. Real-time intelligence can help ensure  that data coming from these devices is secure and free of being tampered with, helping to keep patient records secure. 
• Secure the Supply Chain: Healthcare organizations often use IoT devices from a variety of vendors. Real-time threat intelligence looks at the security posture of these devices, flagging risks within the supply chain.

How Cylera Can Help 

As one of the leading cybersecurity firms devoted to helping healthcare organizations safeguard and solidify their IoT device security, Cylera is uniquely positioned to be on the front line of emerging threats across the healthcare cybersecurity landscape. 

Using a combination of machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), behavioral analytics, and threat intelligence, Cylera leverages the latest technologies to help hospitals and clinics around the world stay one step ahead of cyber threats and exploits. 

We invite you to learn more about how our powerful cybersecurity solution can help your healthcare organization stay informed of ongoing threats, protect your devices, and secure patient information while providing a complete inventory and monitoring of all IoT-connected devices. 

Through our visibility, tracking, and security threat management, we help healthcare organizations support compliance and audit processes while delivering advanced analytics and reporting. By dynamically identifying, assessing and prioritizing device vulnerabilities, as well as providing suggestions for proper mitigation and remediation, we help IT staff and administrators significantly improve the security of their IoT devices. Request a demo or contact us to learn more.