Cyberthreats to Hospitals: Panacea, a Toolkit for People-Centric Cybersecurity

Abstract

Healthcare organizations are an attractive target for cyber-attacks, because the digitization of health processes is emerging as a necessity. Healthcare is a rich source of valuable data and its defences are weak. The particular weakness of this domain is due to the high complexity and dynamism of the healthcare technological environment and to the fact that healthcare working environment has many characteristics that make human behaviour a cybersecurity hazard. Cyberattacks may have significant effects on the provision of health services. Concrete measures strengthening a healthcare setting must take into account number and diversity of hospital basic components and existing security policies. The purpose of this work is to present a cybersecurity toolkit for connected devices and people. Panacea toolkit supports hospitals performing preparedness activities for example: assessment of the nature and severity of a threat, identification of mitigation measures and adoption of mitigation strategies.