Given the importance and prevalence of their intellectual property, pharmaceutical businesses are prominent targets for cyber attacks. Read on to know more…
Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting the pharmaceutical business around the world. The current scenario of the Covid-19 vaccine’s development and its distribution across the world has put the pharmaceutical Industry in even more danger.
Pharmaceutical firms have always been appealing targets for cybercriminals because they operate in a high-stakes area based on intellectual property. In the two years between 2019 and 2020, cyberattacks on the biotech and pharmaceutical Industries increased by 50%.
According to IBM and the Ponemon Institute’s 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report, pharmaceutical and biotech based companies experience more breaches than any other industry, with 53 percent of them stemming from malicious activity.
Why Pharmaceutical Companies
Pharmaceutical and healthcare firms, like many other Industries, are undergoing a rapid digital transformation, with more data being collected and managed online than ever before, making them more vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Hackers can sell stolen data like personal patient information on the dark web, including address history, financial information, and social security numbers, which can later be used to commit identity theft. Therefore stolen data from healthcare and pharmaceutical organisations is quite valuable for the hackers.
A successful data or cybersecurity breach can result in stolen Intellectual Property (IP), repeated clinical trials, contaminated drugs, physical damage and server downtime, litigation, and lost revenue, among other things.
Third-party Vendors
Several pharmaceutical based organisations, such as treatment centers, insurance providers, and manufacturers, rely on third-party vendors to carry out daily operations and increase efficiencies.
If any of the ecosystem’s third-party vendors suffers a data breach, the business will be impacted operationally and the company will likely bear some of the reputational and financial consequences. This is why it’s critical to have full visibility across the network, allowing security team to regularly monitor the cybersecurity process of third-party vendors.
The IoT Factor
The pharmaceutical sector has recently adopted the Internet of Things (IoT), which is a system of interconnected computing devices, digital devices and medical equipments that can communicate and transfer data across a network. This facilitates to streamline access to crucial documents and critical patient’s data, as well as the use of big data to monitor Industry trends and trial success.
Due to the health Industry’s unique privacy challenges, the IoT can add up to your organization’s cyber risk and create additional vulnerabilities by increasing the attack surface and providing more options for hackers to gain access to the network.
Compliance and Regulations
With new technological advancements and enhanced privacy regulations such as GDPR, the pharmaceutical business now has specific data protection and cybersecurity duties. Pharmaceutical businesses are concerned about cyber security, but they must also adhere to various regulations that outlines control and audit standards for clinical trial systems. Whether it’s a database of clinical trial data or drug formulas, or a Industrial control system, in the manufacturing of pharmaceutical — data is crucial and this has to be secured. Hence, pharma companies should look for solutions that offers security configuration management, vulnerability management and log management capabilities to protect critical systems.
Organizations should be attentive and aware of their IT network’s cybersecurity posture by being able to proactively identify and mitigate risks, continuously monitor third-party vendors, and automate compliance with privacy regulations.
Conclusion
Cyber threats to pharmaceutical companies are real, and regulations is one of the steps to be taken in that direction. Cybersecurity efforts along with business initiative including people, processes, and technology should be the agenda of every organisation to combat cybersecurity threats.
As hackers become more sophisticated, it is the responsibility of the pharmaceutical and healthcare Industry to protect patients’ privacy and secure health-care provider infrastructure in order to avoid costly breaches, data loss, and a loss of public trust.