The healthcare cybersecurity market to grow steadily by 2026
The healthcare cybersecurity market registered a CAGR of 15.6% over the forecast period 2021 – 2026, according to ResearchAndMarkets.
Hospitals to drive the healthcare cybersecurity market
Hospitals are vulnerable to cyberattacks because the existing tech systems are becoming increasingly complicated. Hospital staff relies on mobile devices, along with monitoring equipment. They are also responsible for the collection of personal details of their patients, including social security numbers, medicines they are taking, and credit card information. This makes them a primary target of attackers.
There is a significant rise in mortality rate in hospitals after a data breach. Moreover, the quality of care usually goes down in times of an epidemic, since the staff is stressed more than usual. In February 2019, a major Melbourne hospital’s medical records were accessed by hackers, where 15,000 patient records were compromised.
Cybersecurity predicts that ransomware attacks on hospitals may increase five times between 2018 and 2021. This calls for increased adoption of cybersecurity measures.
To address the issue of cybersecurity, contactless and RFID readers are being used for physical and logical control access applications. For instance, ELATEC readers are used for securing print management and other healthcare ecosystem applications.
Nowadays, connected medical devices outnumber mobile devices, such as mobile phones and laptops. They play a significant role in the delivery of care and operational efficiency, but on the other hand, each connected device also opens the door to a malicious cyberattack.
Lack of dedicated IT professionals and a cybersecurity division in medical organizations is driving several hospitals and healthcare organizations to prefer cloud-based cybersecurity solutions.
As most of the healthcare organizations and hospitals globally lack require IT infrastructure to establish an in-hose cybersecurity division, the demand for cloud-based cybersecurity services is expected to increase rapidly, over the forecast period.
North America to dominate the market
The healthcare industry is one of the most regulated industry in the United States, due to privacy and security concerns associated with digital patient records. Regulations, such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, are ensuring steady growth in the penetration rates of cybersecurity solutions in the country’s healthcare sector.
Recently, in March 2019, over 12 healthcare sector companies and groups submitted a proposal to the FDA for updating the guidelines for the cybersecurity of premarket medical devices. Initiatives, such as these are expected to further increase the adoption of cybersecurity in the country’s healthcare sector. Healthcare organizations, across the United States, are at the forefront of cyberattacks and threats, which is continually compromising patient security.
The 2019 HIMSS Cybersecurity Survey revealed that most of the incidents are caused by bad actors, who use e-mail to penetrate the systems. The HIPAA estimates that in the month of March 2019, approximately 1 million people in the United States had their medical files exposed in data breaches. This is directly responsible for an exponential increase in data breach costs, where the average cost of a data breach is $8.19 million per record.
Some vulnerabilities inadvertently enter the devices, software, and servers or patches are other driving factors for the cybersecurity market. In the case of GE Aestiva and Aespire Anesthesia devices, which are used in the US hospitals, an improper authentication vulnerability was identified in June 2019, which could allow a remote attacker to modify the parameters of a vulnerable device and silence the alarm system.