24 May The Cybersecurity Challenges of the Pharma Industry

When we consider healthcare cybersecurity, we consider the challenges facing hospitals, doctor practices, and urgent care centers. But pharmaceuticals face an equally dangerous field. Given the complex nature of pharma – from distribution logistics and patient data management – it’s a sector of healthcare with immense value for malicious third parties.

Juggling intellectual property and manufacturing operations, any disruption in operations can have a negative cascading effect impacting both the industry and patient. For example, in a breach scenario, patients could see disruptions or delays for their prescriptions. It’s something we don’t think about and take for granted, despite the sensitive nature of pharma cybersecurity.

As with any target in cybersecurity, pharma finds itself in the crosshairs for logistics and data storage reasons. The information pharma production is accountable for is valuable to malicious actors. Therefore, safeguarding this data is of critical importance.

What challenges does pharma cybersecurity face?

There are several risks involved with navigating pharma cybersecurity. Some are well known, such as complex phishing campaigns.

The Internet of Things

Others, however, are the expansion of available attack surfaces. An “attack surface” is defined as a point of network entry that hackers can target through malware, social engineering, or DDoS attacks. The pharmaceutical industry uses a wide expanse of IoT-based devices (the internet of things). In other words, tools, devices, and hardware with network access containing information about logistics, drugs, and patient data.

However, the introduction of IoT in any industry, especially medicine, greatly heightens the risk for cyberattacks and breach events. Interconnected devices, for instance, must be maintained with security updates and checks to ensure they’re protected from breach. Given any IoT device adjacent to pharmaceuticals potentially contains valuable data, all the more reason to keep them protected.

Staff Negligence

Managing pharma data, from where it’s stored, collected, and transferred, are all potential weak points in pharma. This becomes a critical issue due to employee negligence. Anything that causes the mishandling of data creates a dangerous hazard for data safety. For instance, storing data in unverified places/programs (sometimes referred to as “Shadow IT”). Or, users are sharing important information, realized or not. This information can contain logins or passwords. Any leakage of this data can, as you guessed, lead to data breaches and compromised data.

Mergers and New Tech

Pharma is an industry, and often said industry is subject to changes in administration or mergers. But when mergers occur, it’s important the transfer of data is handled carefully. Without proper changeover procedures, data can get lost, along with important patient data.

Proper facilitation of mergers and/or acquisitions is critical for safeguarding data during infrastructure changes. It’s also important to maintain regulatory compliance.

Getting Help

The pharma industry is a component of the medical industry. As such, it’s a vital data lake of invaluable information hackers and malicious third parties are eager to acquire. Therefore, getting assistance whenever possible is essential to maintain productivity and safeguard patient data.

For assistance, you can contact Bytagig today for further information.