When defending overwhelming amounts of data in an ever-shifting threat landscape, cybersecurity can feel like an elusive goal. And the past few years have introduced a combination of factors that only exacerbate that feeling.
Due to a rise in hybrid work and remote care initiatives, many healthcare organizations are now operating in the cloud, and some are managing data and workloads in multiple clouds. “The cloud computing landscape is as dynamic as the weather,”Google notes in a blog post. “As the pace of innovation in the cloud and the availability of new tools and services continues to explode, Gartner forecasts worldwide public cloud end-user spending to reach nearly $600 billion in 2023.”
As data is created from an increasing number of devices and managed in an expansive environment, some statistics indicate that cybersecurity is weakened in the cloud. According to a press release on a recent study by Thales, “More than a third (39 percent) of businesses have experienced a data breach in their cloud environment last year, an increase on the 35 percent reported in 2022. In addition, human error was reported as the leading cause of cloud data breaches by over half (55 percent) of those surveyed.”
DISCOVER: Managed services lend expert support to health IT departments.
Patch Management Is a Fundamental Part of Cybersecurity
IBM defines patch management as “the process of applying vendor-issued updates to close security vulnerabilities and optimize the performance of software and devices. Patch management is sometimes considered a part of vulnerability management.”