Cybersecurity, 24% health facilities under attack

The trend of cyber attacks on Italian hospitals and medical centers is confirmed. In fact, 24% of healthcare facilities in our country reported having suffered cyber attacks in 2020, of which 11% was made up of ransomware and 33% from abusive access to data. This is the picture that emerged from the whitepaper “Understanding cyber risk – The new horizon in healthcare”, created by Sham, a company of the Relyens Group, in collaboration with the Management Department of the University of Turin. The report – based on 68 professionals from structures distributed in 14 Italian regions – analyzes the preparation and awareness of Italian healthcare to deal with the cyber threat and what emerges is that the hacker threat is not underestimated. According to the research, in fact, 59% of the structures perceive the cyber risk issue in healthcare as a priority that impacts on the services provided and internal organizational models. A further 31% rated the issue as partially a priority. Nevertheless, analysts note that the measures adopted by the structures to prevent and manage cyber risk are still infrequent: mapping, risk analysis and vulnerability tests are only one third of the total. The professionals interviewed are Risk Managers, Quality Managers, Data Protection Officers (Dpo), Cyber ​​Security (Ciso) and Clinical Engineering Managers, as well as Heads of the Health and General Management. 70% of the structures belong to the public health sector, 30% to the private sector, with sizes ranging from less than 250 beds to more than 750, representing the composition of the national health system in a homogeneous manner. “It is a circumscribed but representative analysis, which photographs the state of the art of the preparation of our health professionals with respect to the cyber threat and whose results can concretely contribute to the research on the safety of the Health sector” underlined Roberto Ravinale, executive director of the mutual society leader in Healthcare Civil Responsibility in Northern Italy. “The research allowed us to identify critical issues and areas for improvement with the ultimate goal of strengthening health risk management actions also in the IT field” commented – presenting the report today – the authors of research Anna Guerrieri, Risk Manager of Sham in Italy, and Enrico Sorano, aggregate professor of Business Economics at the Management Department of the University of Turin. The research received the patronage of Federsanità; Assolombarda; Lombardy Region Risk Management Center; National Association of Doctors of the Hospital Departments (Anmdo); Religious Association of Social and Health Institutes (Aris); University Consortium for Insurance Engineering (Cineas) and Italian Society of Clinical Risk (Siric)