Ransomware attacks on hospitals and health systems have not stopped during the pandemic In fact the increase has many security experts concerned about infrastructure disruptions and COVID-19 test data integrity. Becker’s Health IT brought this important topic to our attention in their article,”COVID-19 cyber threats: Why data integrity is crucial & how to protect it.”
COVID-19 has resulted in hospitals and executives spreading their priorities and resources even thinner than before the pandemic. This makes it even more challenging to focus on addressing cybersecurity challenges like ransomware attacks.
Disruptions to health infrastructure like these can have tangible outcomes in situations like COVID-19 where delays in care can lead to death. There is quite likely nothing more crucial or important in healthcare at this moment than the ability to reliably test for COVID-19.
Data integrity has never been more important for many reasons. It ensures recoverability and searchability, traceability and connectivity. Protecting the validity and accuracy of data also increases stability and performance while improving reusability and maintainability.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.
