Dive Brief:
- An article in Wired warns that hospital equipment is very easy to hack into, and contends that the industry isn't doing enough to assess the risks, according to a security expert.
- Scott Erven, head of information security at Essentia Health, which operates about 100 clinics, hospitals and pharmacies in Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Idaho, tested every piece of medical equipment the system uses, and concluded that it was all very easily manipulated and hacked.
- "There are very few [devices] that are truly fire walled off from the rest of the organization," Erven said. "Once you get a foothold into the network...you can scan and find almost all of these devices, and it's fairly easy to get on these networks."
Dive Insight:
According to Erven, while medical equipment is regulated for reliability, effectiveness and safety before going to market, little focus is placed on security, and that's something that needs to change, he says. Hospitals can't be said to be secure if the equipment they use for day-to-day procedures can be cracked open like a walnut by hackers. It seems that hospitals—in the hospital equipment industry—have their work cut out for them in becoming more secure to digital attacks.