New York-based medical cybersecurity provider CyberMDX announces a series of educational programs in October to support National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, an initiative launched in 2004 by the National Cyber Security Alliance and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The programs will highlight the 2021 theme, which is based on the impact of people’s offline to online lives. Similarly, medical devices are now moving rapidly from offline to online and there are societal and economic impacts.

While traditionally most medical devices were offline, a recent Deloitte study revealed that nearly half of all medical devices were already connected to the internet by 2018, with that number expected to rise to 68% by 2023. The recent digitization of healthcare environments and proliferation of Internet of Medical Things within medical networks, coupled with the lack of security built into the offline medical devices, has evolved the threat landscape, exposing the industry to new dangers and painting a target on the back of healthcare delivery organizations (HDOs) that have never faced this level of challenge.

“Since the outbreak of the COVID-19, the cyber-resiliency of healthcare companies has been tested with an unprecedented level of attacks,” says Azi Cohen, CEO of CyberMDX. “Raising industry-wide awareness is the first step toward achieving a high level of cyber-resiliency. It’s important that everyone—from healthcare executives to device-makers and regulatory bodies—collaborate and contribute however we can to address the growing threats healthcare faces from its rapidly digitized environments.”

Throughout October, CyberMDX will host a series of healthcare security-related programs to raise awareness about the new threats facing the industry:

  • Ipsos Research: CyberMDX and Philips will join Ipsos as they present the findings from the recent report on “Perspectives in Healthcare Security.” The live interactive webinar is open to all. (October 6)
  • H-ISAC Panel: The CISOs from Metro Health, ChristianaCare, and H-ISAC will participate in the discussion, “October is Cyber Awareness Month—When offline goes online for Medical Devices” (October 13)—open to H-ISAC members only.
  • Discussion with AWS: Cyber-awareness month in Canada will focus this week on the impacts of working and networking. CyberMDX and its partner, Amazon Web Services, will host a webinar that will take an introspective look into the rise of remote work and its impact on patient data security and the implications to healthcare providers. (October 21)—open to Digital Health Canada members only.

In support of the global effort, CyberMDX is also committed to continuing its contributions to the healthcare community, company officials say. The team of researchers, white hat hackers, and engineers collect information about possible attack paths to understand attacker motives, means, and methods to deliver the best protection possible. Moreover, “CyberMDX works closely with regulatory bodies such as the FDA and CISA, medical devices vendors, and HDOs to educate and improve the medical devices security awareness of the market,” company officials say.

To read Cohen’s blog on Cyber Awareness Month, click here.