Intelligent SME.tech Issue 55 | Page 38

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FOR HEALTHCARE IT TEAMS, ENSURING ENDPOINT SECURITY AND CREATING A FRICTIONLESS PATIENT- PROVIDER RELATIONSHIP WILL BE TOP PRIORITIES.
of endpoints within organisations continues to increase exponentially. Healthcare is a highly distributed sector, with employees and IT assets spread across offices, buildings and even campuses. This not only makes the job of IT teams more challenging, but also expands the attack surface and window of opportunity for bad actors.
From small primary care practices to large healthcare systems, IT teams often run incredibly lean – at times with one technician managing thousands of endpoints. Having so many endpoints across the network can present challenges when it comes to patching, resulting in both security and compliance issues.
Bad actors regularly target healthcare organisations because of the quantity and sensitivity of the data they hold. Once attackers have access to personal medical information, they can hold it for ransom and sell it on the dark web or tamper with the data to cause disruption and mistrust within an organisation.
How does the increasing number of endpoints pose a threat to healthcare organisations?
Whilst necessary to improve the speed and availability of diagnosis and treatment, the increasing number of endpoints in healthcare organisations can also open up more attack vectors for those looking to compromise or abuse the systems assisting in care provision.
With AI and LLMs becoming more accessible, phishing attacks have become increasingly
38 Intelligent SME. tech