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From Data to Action: Enhancing Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices with Threat Sharing

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Healthcare Dec 9, 2024

When examining the threat landscape, is there a time when healthcare is not under attack? The healthcare sector is a perennial favorite of cybercriminals looking to strike it big because of its necessary stashes of private, personal (and health-sensitive) information. 

Sophisticated, usable threat intelligence is an absolute must for the healthcare industry, but old methods of obtaining threat intel are dated, siloed, and ineffective. Cyware’s Cyber Fusion Center (CFC) changes that, enhancing organization's sensitive data protection by  replacing point solutions with a platform and disconnected tools with collaboration. 

See what a difference it makes in streamlining threat intelligence when it matters most. 

The Evolution of Threat Intelligence Sharing in Healthcare

Healthcare organizations know they’re under constant cyber threat and have traditionally used Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs) to stay informed. ISACs are centralized hubs where “all-hazards threat and mitigation data” is gathered and disseminated to its members, primarily critical infrastructure, with typically one per sector (one for aviation, water, healthcare, power, etc.). 

While good in a general sense, the knowledge from this cybersecurity practice can be too general and, therefore, not valuable enough to medical facilities facing specific attacks. When threat actors target a particular location, they can spin up exploits (easier now with RaaS or AI) specifically for that target – ones that the ISAC would know nothing about. Additionally, there is no way for the ISACs to gain that critical context that only exists inside the target’s network – that incriminating trail of compromise, other affected assets, geolocation, specific IPs, and so on. 

You can’t catch a specific threat with broad facts, so healthcare organizations are stuck with swaths of data (all locked up in their network) and yet no way to access it in a way that isn’t complex, involves several different trails and tools, and takes a lot of time and talent

That was until Cyber Fusion came along and changed the game for healthcare cybersecurity. 

What is Cyware’s Cyber Fusion?

Cyware’s Cyber Fusion Center (CFC) integrates:

  • Intelligence | Bringing together telemetry from across your cyber risk ecosystem. 
  • Security orchestration | Connecting Cyber, IT, and DevOps workflows across the cloud, in hybrid environments, and on-premises. 
  • Automation | Automated real-time data collection, correlation, and analysis, plus automated playbook plays and workflows, extending to detection and response .

Cyber Fusion becomes the ultimate Swiss Army Knife for health industry cybersecurity practices. Speed is crucial for sensitive data protection, so to get fast results, it’s all about consolidation and collaboration. Cyware gives critical sectors like healthcare the access, context, and correlated security capabilities they need to resolve issues faster. And in an industry like healthcare, every minute safely “online” matters. 

Going Beyond ISACs: Elevating Threat Sharing and Collaboration

While ISACs have limitations (as we discussed before), they are nonetheless critical components for healthcare organizations and thousands of critical infrastructure organizations nationwide. Their reach must only be extended a little more for these organizations to realize their full value (and bridge those limitations). And this is where Cyware comes in.

Cyware’s Cyber Fusion enhances traditional ISACs by enabling real-time, bidirectional threat sharing across sectors. It also facilitates threat intelligence sharing between ISACs/ISAOs for a rising tide that lifts all ships. 

Now, if healthcare faces a threat that finance has faced before, that information is made available to them, and everyone benefits. Without this collaborative capability, the medical organization under attack may never have even known to draw on the previously attacked finance company as a resource. As the team resolves the issue, they can contribute their findings to the knowledge share. By connecting healthcare organizations with other critical infrastructure sectors, Cyware’s Cyber Fusion – fosters collaborative intelligence sharing and improves the whole. 

In addition, Cyware’s Cyber Fusion capabilities empower contextual awareness, using AI-powered engines to correlate threat data across multiple solutions across your enterprise. Being able to see threats in context means less time investigating, fewer false positives, and ultimately, faster decision-making when it counts. By rapidly getting aggregated, accurate threat data, teams can lean into proactive defense strategies to chase down active exploits before they harm the enterprise. 

Benefits of Cyber Fusion for Healthcare Security Teams

Cyber Fusion has its advantages in the medical field (and beyond). Those advantages include:

  • Operational efficiency | Streamline processes with automated workflows, a centralized dashboard, and security functions. 
  • Enhanced threat detection | Cyware seamlessly orchestrates tools across your security ecosystem, empowering alert enrichment and enhanced threat detection. 
  • Better collaboration | With bi-directional alert and advisory sharing, medical groups can get real-time threat data from other sectors. This adds to collaboration, enhanced by data from every telemetry source in your ecosystem to enable faster incident response.

In a sector like healthcare, it is crucial to avoid downtime, which leads to things like stolen personal healthcare information (PHI), offline IoT devices used by hospital staff to communicate with critical resources, and – at worst – lost power to life-saving machines. To keep online, the industry needs to constantly be aware of threats on the horizon and proactively stay safe – this is one industry where reactive security could have life-or-death consequences. 

That is why achieving dynamic cybersecurity collaboration tailored to the healthcare sector is crucial. In times of crisis, healthcare SOCs need all vital threat information, solution capabilities, and outside resources at their fingertips. These benefits also translate directly to good for the patient: improved patient safety, better protected sensitive medical data, and HIPAA-compliant medical groups (which means more secure patient PHI).  

Collaboration to Context-Rich Intelligence

As threats ramp up, individual medical organizations are increasingly unequipped to go it alone. Collaboration is needed beyond traditional boundaries, and that means gaining threat intelligence from wherever an organization can. 

  • It means not only seeing threats but seeing threats in context. 
  • It means leveling up the intel you get from ISACs for real-time, bi-directional threat sharing. 
  • It means reaching across the aisle and sharing what you know with other sectors – and them sharing with you. 

And it means having the technology to get all that done. Cyware’s Cyber Fusion elevates threat sharing and contextual awareness so teams can use their data, not drown in it, and beat their threats before their threats beat them. In any other industry, this might ultimately mean more identities kept safe (and isn’t that the point). But in healthcare, well-coordinated threat intelligence could mean the difference between life and death.

Leverage available threat intelligence like never before with Cyware’s Cyber Fusion Center today. Download the whitepaper to learn more or request a demo to get started.

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