Healthcare Companies Have Worse Cybersecurity Than Retailers
With security breaches affecting big name retailers like eBay and Target, retail stores are now in the cybersecurity spotlight. However, according to a new analysis of Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index companies by BitSight Technologies, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies are worse than retailers when it comes to security performance.
BitSight compared the performance of utilities, finance, health and retail industry groups from April 2013 to March 2014. The analysis found that not only did healthcare have the lowest scores in security practices (660 on a scale of 250 to 900), but it had the lowest response times to security issues. The report stated that it took on average 5.3 days for healthcare companies to fix an issue.
Additionally, the report stated that healthcare companies had the highest percentages of the Conficker worm, a vicious software that has been around for a while. Although malicious, this virus is relatively easy to get rid of and companies with security practices in place shouldn’t have any issues with it.
The finance sector had the best score, with a 765. Stephen Boyer, chief technology officer at BitSIght, believes this is because at “the high-performing organizations, it is an executive-level issue. What we’ve seen in financial services is they have a culture of risk management. They’ve been managing fraud for quite some time. It’s money to them.”
Unfortunately, healthcare companies are major targets for hackers. Once they gain access, hackers can obtain medical information and prescriptions, which are in high demand on the black market. It’s important for healthcare companies to start implementing stronger security policies to protect their patients’ and companies’ data.
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