Healthcare providers in India need to reinforce the cyber resiliency of their organisations especially when the country is now reporting a 300% surge in cyberattacks, cautioned Dell Technologies.
Cyberattacks have been disrupting operations of pandemic-hit healthcare providers even as they were embracing digital transformation to improve their recovery and resiliency, said Ripu Bajwa, director and general manager, Data Protection Solutions at Dell.
At the initial peak of the pandemic itself, seven million cases of cyberattacks on the healthcare industry were registered in the country, Mr. Bajwa told The Hindu.
“Ransomware and attempts to penetrate systems of healthcare institutions will continue to be a serious problem. With a 300% surge in cyberattack incidents in India, it is more important that key decision makers place intrinsic security at the heart of their digital strategies,” he opined.
Healthcare leaders needed to reinforce the cyber resiliency of their organisations in order to protect their most critical and sensitive data, comprising patients’ medical records, accompanying images, and documents from diagnostic systems.
“Placing this critical data in a vault will help ensure it is isolated, can’t be modified and can be quickly recovered in the event of an attack, enabling healthcare services to get up and running quickly again,” Mr. Bajwa added.
On the scope of preventing and preempting, he pointed out that preventative cybertechnology was constantly evolving with new innovations to protect data and keep pace with the bad actors.
“However, a collaborative approach is now needed to maximise resilience even with preventive technologies. As international governments come together to mount more robust, joint defences against cyberattacks, so too should the brightest cyberexperts, CIOs, and public health leaders,” Mr. Bajwa added.
As per a report by KPMG, India continues to remain the country facing the second-largest number of cyberattacks, with both malware and ransomware particularly impacting the healthcare industry. The ‘State of Ransomware in Healthcare 2021’ report indicates 34% of healthcare organisations were hit by ransomware last year.
Published - March 12, 2022 09:10 pm IST
