Healthcare IT managers are held to a higher standard than other IT groups when it comes to information security. Patient data and other personal identifiable information are considered the most sensitive data in any commercial environment. A system outage could impact orders for diagnostic procedures or lifesaving medication. Healthcare IT teams also have to meet a higher level of regulatory requirements while having a smaller pool of software and hardware suppliers than their enterprise counterparts.
Focusing on these third-party suppliers is an important part of maintaining cyber resilience and reducing risk. Some of the most significant breaches over the past decade have been traced to third parties, which increases the pressure on healthcare IT teams to pay special attention to their software and hardware supply chains.
Some strategies are common to all environments, such as conducting security assessments of software and hardware vendors, and adding contractual requirements for notification and Software Bill of Materials information. When it comes to improving healthcare’s cyber resilience in the supply chain management, here are four areas IT teams may want to direct their focus.
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