So what can healthcare providers and organizations do to protect their patients and themselves from unwanted cyber intruders? Here are five key strategies to establishing a holistic cybersecurity plan.

Don’t go it alone. It’s imperative that you work with all involved parties to ensure they are as committed to data security as you are. From hospitals to practitioners, and labs to insurance companies, all those included in this complex ecosystem must be active participants protecting data.

There are multiple points of entry for any given cyberattack and your job is to ensure that every connection between your patient’s data and the outside world is controlled and secure. The more interconnected people, data and organizations are, the higher the risk. Ensure that the only applications running on your systems are secure and approved. There are many links in the chain, and you are only as strong as your weakest link.

Adopt Risk Management Framework (RMF). RMF is a set of standards developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and is mandatory for federal agencies and the organizations working with them.

Risk management is progressive, proactive, and focused on synergistic solutions, because it’s based on formal frameworks and methodologies. RMF is the best way to protect data, but it only works if everyone in the ecosystem is adhering to the standard.

One of the biggest challenges in managing the security of your ecosystem is the fact that not everyone follows RMF (industry gold standard) guidelines to the full extent. If your partners are not RMF compliant, they represent that weak link.

Per RMF, your system and any system that connects to you should be tested on a regular basis to ensure they are up to date on the latest threats and preventions. Establish a cybersecurity task force to regularly test systems and participate in industry conversations.

For example, Canon Medical Systems is an active participant in the FDA-recommended community www.nhisac.org. Here you will find cyber security experts from across the industry sharing information on potential risks and vulnerabilities, as well as tactics for defending against them.

Invest in medical imaging equipment that minimizes security vulnerabilities. Look for systems that feature properly configured endpoints that deploy scalable protection against zero-day and advanced persistent threats. For example, at Canon Medical Systems we created InnerVision Plus, which through its network firewall features, provides 1:1 IP translation to isolate and protect the equipment on your network before imaging performance is affected. All of our imaging systems have the option for advanced security capabilities that follow the strict security guidelines of RMF and are authorized as secure by the U.S. Department of Defense.

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