Palo Alto Networks secures medical devices – Technologist

“Healthcare providers continue to be high-value targets for attackers. This reality, combined with the diversity of medical IoT devices and their inherent vulnerabilities, points to a real need for device security that is purpose-built for healthcare use cases,” said Ed Lee, research director, IoT and Intelligent Edge Security, IDC.

“The ability to defend against threats targeting critical care devices while maintaining operational availability and strengthening the alignment of device governance responsibilities between IT and Biomed engineering teams is quickly becoming a necessity for the protection of patient data and lives.”

Ed Lee

As healthcare providers use digital devices such as diagnostic and monitoring systems, ambulance equipment, and surgical robots to improve patient care, the security of those devices is as important as their primary function.

It is therefore understandable that as technology advances and new innovations become accessible, the healthcare industry becomes a prime target for cybercriminals. Why not? Healthcare practitioners are not necessarily at the cutting edge of cybersecurity practice, and with how busy they are performing their tasks, who can blame them?

“The proliferation of connected medical devices in the healthcare industry brings a wealth of benefits, but these devices are often not well secured. For example, according to Unit 42, an alarming 75% of smart infusion pumps examined on the networks of hospitals and healthcare organizations had known security gaps,” said Anand Oswal, senior vice president of products, and network security at Palo Alto Networks.

“This makes security devices an attractive target for cyber attackers, potentially exposing patient data and ultimately putting patients at risk.”

Anand Oswal

Zero trust in healthcare

Zero Trust is a strategic approach to cybersecurity that secures an organization by eliminating implicit trust by continuously verifying every user and device. While a Zero Trust approach is critical to help protect medical devices against today’s cyber threats, it can be hard to implement in practice.

Through automated device discovery, contextual segmentation, least privilege policy recommendations and one-click enforcement of policies, Palo Alto Networks Medical IoT Security delivers a Zero Trust approach in a seamless, simplified manner.

It also provides best-in-class threat protection through seamless integration with Palo Alto Networks cloud-delivered security services, such as Advanced Threat Prevention and Advanced URL Filtering.

Using ML enables healthcare organizations to:

• Create device rules with automated security responses: Easily create rules that monitor devices for behavioural anomalies and automatically trigger appropriate responses. For example, if a medical device that typically only sends small amounts of data unexpectedly begins to use a lot of bandwidth, the device can be cut off from the internet and security teams can be alerted.
• Automate Zero Trust policy recommendations and enforcement: Enforce recommended least-privileged access policies for medical devices with one click using Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls or supported network enforcement technologies. This eliminates error-prone and time-consuming manual policy creation and scales easily across a set of devices with the same profile.
• Understand device vulnerabilities and risk posture: Access each medical device’s Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) and map them to Common Vulnerability Exposures (CVEs). This mapping helps identify the software libraries used on medical devices and any associated vulnerabilities. Get immediate insights into the risk posture of each device, including end-of-life status, recall notification, default password alert and unauthorized external website communication.
• Improve compliance: Easily understand medical device vulnerabilities, patch status and security settings, and then get recommendations to bring devices into compliance with rules and guidelines, such as the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and similar laws and regulations.
• Verify network segmentation: Visualize the entire map of connected devices and ensure each device is placed in its designated network segment. Proper network segmentation can ensure a device only communicates with authorized systems.
• Simplify operations: Two distinct dashboards allow IT and biomedical engineering teams to each see the information critical to their roles. Integration with existing healthcare information management systems, like AIMS and Epic Systems, help automate workflows.

“With thousands of devices to manage, healthcare environments are extremely complex and require intelligent security solutions capable of doing more. Adding intelligence will enable providers to improve operational efficiency, which will enhance patient and practitioner experience and alleviate the burden of an ongoing IT skills shortage,” said Bob Laliberte, principal analyst, ESG.