How Hospitals Can Combat Ransomware

f you thought that hacking personal computers, companies, and banks is awful, wait ‘till you hear about the hospitals. Hackers who hold a hospital’s computer system hostage as they did in the recent WannaCry attack, know that lives are on the line. Patients can suffer severe health effects when a hospital’s system is held hostage, and some may even die. To help hospitals protect themselves against such attacks, three medical and legal experts explain what steps should be taken.
In the article Annals of Internal Medicine, authors Dr. Eli Adashi, professor of medical science and former dean of medicine and biological sciences at Brown University; I. Glenn Cohen, professor of law at Harvard University; and Sharona Hoffman, professor of law and bioethics at Case Western Reserve University, explain that there are things hospitals can do to reduce the risk, but that these attacks are probably inevitable, even if everything functions “perfectly”.
The authors list some simple as well as some complex steps that hospitals can take to prevent or mitigate attacks including:
workforce training,
retaining cybersecurity expertise,
patching operating systems,
reporting attacks promptly to authorities.
There are also nationwide steps that can be taken, although these are harder to accomplish. The authors note that we need a coordinated national effort to truly stop ransomware attacks.

Reference:
Brown University via ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170919144821.htm)