CryptoniteNXT in the Media

Moving Target Defense Start-Up and Medical Device Innovation, Safety and Security Consortium Join Forces to Promote Solutions to Health Care Vulnerabilities and Systemic Issues

ROCKVILLE, Md. & SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Cryptonite, a leader in moving target cyber defense, and MDISS, the Medical Device Innovation, Safety and Security Consortium, released today the joint “Health Care Cybersecurity Best Practices” report, which provides a snapshot of some of the current cybersecurity environments in health care, shares important insights into cyber threat related trends in these environments, and identifies recent technology solutions that can help maintain the integrity of medical devices that are installed and connected in health care network environments.

“We are thrilled to release this report with MDISS’s sponsorship to show the industry how to best address risks within healthcare networks. The technology explosion in modern healthcare has been outpacing security, with the inadvertent impact of creating more opportunities for cyber attackers to compromise healthcare networks”

Dr. Dale Nordenberg, MD, Executive Director of MDISS, is a physician, medical epidemiologist and medical informatics expert. Formerly CIO at the National Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Infectious Diseases, Dr. Nordenberg stated, “This joint effort with Cryptonite shows how private and nonprofit sectors can to work together to raise awareness and advance network-centric scalable solutions for patient care-delivery networks. Our collaboration centers around the recognition that all medical devices and health systems need best practices that reduce risk and help mitigate the vulnerabilities in health care networks. For MDISS, patient safety is the overriding and most important issue. Medical devices are in the center of the cyber storm bullseye, as attackers target exploits to penetrate these devices. Health care, and the medical device arena, in particular are at high risk for cyber threats and need to be addressed now.”

The Cryptonite and MDISS collaboration started with the question, What cyber solutions and best practices can be applied at scale to have an immediate and substantive impact on cyber risk reduction? Across our nation’s large and complex healthcare system, MDISS has estimated that there are approximately 50 billion exposures, or contacts, between connected medical devices and patients in a single year. A cyber exposure of this magnitude demands urgent attention and collaborative solutions for rapid innovation, application, and impact.

Health care networks remain under sustained attack by cybercriminals who intentionally target health care networks for two primary reasons – to steal the medical records they contain and to extort ransom payments. Medical records are prime targets, as this data is highly prized to support identity theft and financial fraud.

Medical records also rival those records stored within credit bureaus for completeness and criminal utility. For these reasons, medical records are an attractive commodity on the dark web where they command high premiums from criminal purchasers. Hostile nation states also acquire medical records, amongst other stolen records and databases, to assemble profiles on our citizens for future use. In contrast, ransomware and other forms of crypto malware provide more immediate financial rewards by preventing access to essential health care network data until ransom in the form of digital currency is disbursed.

“We are thrilled to release this report with MDISS’s sponsorship to show the industry how to best address risks within healthcare networks. The technology explosion in modern healthcare has been outpacing security, with the inadvertent impact of creating more opportunities for cyber attackers to compromise healthcare networks,” said Michael Simon, CEO of Cryptonite. “New cyber defense technology sets are designed to better address common vulnerabilities and elevate cybersecurity hygiene to a level necessary to protect the integrity of healthcare records and maintain patient safety.”