Foundation of healthcare cybersecurity

Healthcare automation has brought significant benefits to health care in terms of operational cost reduction, quality of care, patient convenience and initiation of personalized care. It has also brought new and increasing security and privacy challenges. The recent spate of successful cyberattacks against healthcare systems demonstrate that the security and privacy threats in health care are more varied and capable of undermining patient care and diminish revenues of healthcare sector. Considering the role that the healthcare sector plays within our society, the importance of protecting this critical infrastructure cannot be overstated. In this chapter the foundation of healthcare cybersecurity is presented. Major components of the healthcare systems and the associated requirements in terms of security and privacy are discussed. The threat landscape, vulnerabilities exploited to perpetrate cyberattacks against healthcare organizations and the various cyberattack types are identified and presented. Countermeasures and tools to defend and mitigate cyberattacks are also discussed.