Cyber-attacks and threats for healthcare - a multi-layer thread analysis.

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Informatics
• Cybersecurity
• Digital Health

Background:

• Healthcare is rapidly digitalizing, increasing efficiency and patient convenience.
• This digital transformation introduces significant cybersecurity risks to sensitive medical data and patient safety.
• Existing technical countermeasures focus on data confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of cybersecurity in the healthcare domain.
• To identify and analyze prevalent cyber threats targeting healthcare systems.
• To introduce a novel multi-layer attack model for enhanced threat identification and analysis.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of current cybersecurity practices and threats in healthcare.
• Analysis of existing technical countermeasures and their effectiveness.
• Development and presentation of a multi-layer attack model.

Main Results:

• Digitalization presents both opportunities and substantial cybersecurity vulnerabilities in healthcare.
• Current technical solutions are essential but face evolving threats.
• The proposed multi-layer attack model offers a new framework for understanding and mitigating healthcare cyber risks.

Conclusions:

• Healthcare cybersecurity is critical for protecting patient safety and data integrity.
• A proactive and adaptive approach to threat analysis is necessary.
• The multi-layer attack model provides a valuable tool for healthcare organizations to strengthen their security posture.