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Doctors, please be careful. Clinician colleagues may have exposed their workstations to hacking attacks.
According to a study by cybersecurity consultant Armis, nurse call systems are the devices most exposed to malicious computer activity in hospitals and clinical settings. Cameras, printers and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) devices are also among the Internet of Things (IoT) devices vulnerable to attack.
“These numbers are a strong indicator of the challenges facing healthcare organizations around the world.
“Technological advances are essential to improve the speed and quality of healthcare delivery as the industry faces the challenge of a shortage of healthcare providers, but with the rise of connected healthcare, the attack surface is expanding. We will expand,” Waqas said. “Securing all kinds of connected devices, medical, IoT and even building management systems with full visibility and continuous contextual monitoring is a key factor in ensuring patient safety. “
Connecting devices to provide patient data to the electronic medical record improves patient care, but more devices can introduce more security vulnerabilities. According to Armis, Smart Hospital expects that by 2026, he will have more than 7 million devices on the Internet of Medical Devices.
Vulnerability tracking
After examining the data from the Armis-connected device, we found the following:
- 39% of nurse call systems have unpatched Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) with a severity of Critical, and 48% have unpatched CVEs.
- 27% of infusion pumps have CVEs of critical severity and 30% have unpatched CVEs
- 4% of pharmacy dispensing systems have critical CVEs, 86% have other unpatched CVEs, and 32% run on unsupported versions of Windows.
- 19% of connected medical devices are running unsupported operating systems.
Among other devices used in medical environments, cameras had the worst results, with 56% having CVEs of critical severity and 59% having unpatched CVEs. Printers are in second place, with 37% having unpatched CVEs and 30% having critical CVEs. According to Armis, 53% of VoIP devices have unpatched CVEs, but only 2% are of critical severity.
Data comes from over 3 billion connected medical and IoT devices in Armis’ Asset Intelligence and Security Platform. The California-based company provides cyber asset management, risk management, and automated execution to his Forune 100 companies around the world.
