Keeping Healthcare Systems Secure Via the Power of Network Visibility

The beating heart of the healthcare sector is under increased threats, and no amount of antibiotics can protect the proverbial patient. In this case, we’re referring to the vital networks healthcare systems and providers rely on to share data and treat patients. Today, the entire industry faces an unprecedented array of cyberthreats that are only growing in complexity and frequency. Bad actors are targeting sensitive patient data and critical infrastructure, often via sophisticated techniques such as ransomware and phishing attacks.

The average cost of a healthcare data breach was estimated to be nearly $10 million in 2024, to say nothing of the time spent reversing the damage and the reputational harm caused by the attack. And most importantly, any incursion against the network puts patient care at risk.

Changing Tactics: The Bad Guys Are Getting Smarter

Unfortunately, as threat detection and prevention measures get better, cybercriminals are getting smarter and changing their tactics. Attackers are becoming more and more sophisticated, which means healthcare organizations are seeing attacks that are moving laterally (east to west), allowing them to access more critical systems and data and further exacerbating a very dynamic situation.

Attackers are also increasingly focusing on evading detection. In many cases, this means targeting unmanaged devices, such as Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). Some of these are legacy devices into which security teams struggle to gain visibility or about which they are simply unaware. If these devices have not been patched, they may be vulnerable to compromise. Custom malware aimed at edge devices is becoming more frequent as attackers increase the sophistication of incursions.

Although healthcare organizations are certainly doing more training to ensure personnel don’t fall prey to cyberattacks, and controls have been tightened, vulnerabilities remain. Security breaches continue to happen all too frequently, with attackers gaining unauthorized access to data with malicious intent. In some cases, these are ransomware attacks in which data and/or system access is held hostage until a ransom is paid.

Regrettably, breaches, as well as indicators of compromise, can be hard to detect. Unusual behavior or activity on the network could be a sign of an incursion. This might take the form of large files being transferred laterally from one location to another within the network. SecOps teams can use threat intel reports to determine if partner organizations or somebody with whom they are doing business has come under attack. This is particularly important if the two companies’ systems are communicating with each other.

Network Visibility Is Essential to Cybersecurity

Network visibility is key to preventing a breach, as well as in recovering once a breach has occurred. Visibility is all about understanding the behavior of critical assets. It starts with identifying where assets exist physically—essentially, you can’t protect what you don’t see. The next step is to ascertain the behavior of these assets to establish a baseline, which will help in determining whether subsequent behavior is expected or unexpected. Armed with this knowledge, SecOps can put policies in place, building security by design.

Simply knowing that devices and applications are communicating with each other is not enough. SecOps needs to understand the patterns and content of the conversations. This is the only way to know if malicious or suspicious intent is occurring. Having visibility into the lateral movement of wire data, also known as packet data, within the enterprise network is essential to detecting cyberattacks. Most security organizations struggle to get east-west visibility into server communications. And because the vast majority of breached assets are occurring on servers, SecOps needs end-through-end visibility.

In the face of advanced persistent threats—which are those that have evaded detection and infiltrated the network and are operating in a stealthy way, slowly accessing critical data via various systems and then exfiltrating that data—SecOps needs to be able to detect these hard-to-uncover intrusions. These threats often move slowly, making them difficult to spot. They can take months to detect. This is why understanding the behavior of critical assets is so important, because it’s the best way to signal or understand a potential intrusion.

By leveraging the richest data source within the network, which is the packets, security teams can detect unusual activities that may signal an ongoing attack. NETSCOUT’s network-based cybersecurity platform features a comprehensive portfolio of products that are designed to provide the scale, scope, and consistency required to secure complex healthcare industry infrastructures. NETSCOUT’s Omnis network security solution empowers SecOps teams to stay one step ahead of cyberthreats. And that’s a healthy bit of news for any healthcare organization.

To learn more about remote site observability, watch our webinar.