Webinar: Current Perspectives and Recommendations on Ensuring Cybersecurity
In a new webinar program, Raj Chopra, MD and Peter Reilly share their insights on the importance of cybersecurity, keys to effective downtime communication, the ripple effects and costs of security breaches, challenges with AI and practical safeguards.
Health-care practices need a communication plan for cyberattack downtime before an attack happens and a few key safeguards, including multifactor authentication (MFA), tested backups and staff training, can reduce their exposure, according to Raj Chopra, MD and Peter Reilly, who provided their perspectives in a new webinar on cybersecurity in radiology and health care.
Raj Chopra, MD, said the Change Healthcare data breach in 2024 shut down his practice for hours, halting emergency department imaging while little information flowed from the vendor and IT administrators to radiologists. As a result, radiologists fielded calls from frustrated clinicians and patients without answers to give them.
"We now need to have a strategy. You need to be ready for the downtime before the downtime, not during the downtime, and that's what we failed at and have learned from that event," said Dr. Chopra, the chief medical officer for Merge by Merative.
Emphasizing a Proactive Team Approach to Cybersecurity Vigilance
He contrasted that experience with his utility company, which sent outage updates on a set schedule even when estimates changed. Dr. Chopra said administrators should test security updates thoroughly and explain their purpose and workflow effects, while radiologists should treat cybersecurity training seriously rather than dismiss it. He added that AI tools that improve interoperability may also become entry points for bad actors, which will require collaboration among vendors, IT staff and radiologists.
"If we don't have a good cybersecurity program, we're actually not doing good patient care. They're linked. I truly believe that," noted Dr. Chopra.
Why are Medical Practices Targeted in Cyberattacks?
Peter Reilly, the North American practice leader for health care at Hub International, said health care has been the leading source of data breaches for 13 straight years and that the problem has moved from hospitals to individual practices. Citing an IBM study, he said the average health-care breach costs more than $6.6 million and takes 279 days to find and contain. He noted the aforementioned Change Healthcare incident resulted in $3 billion in costs and affected 190 million people.
"You're not targeted because you're important. You're targeted because you're reachable, and that is because far too many medical practices have not taken the relatively simple and straightforward steps in order to protect the information that they have," explained Reilly.
What Are Some Essential Safeguards to Help Prevent Cyberattacks?
Reilly recommended three immediate actions: confirm MFA is enabled across email, electronic health records, remote access and banking; ask the IT provider when the last backup and restoration test occurred; and locate the practice's most recent risk analysis. He said insurance carriers can run vulnerability testing at no cost often within a month.
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