In the novel “Through the Looking-Glass,” the Red Queen tells Alice that the young girl must run her fastest to keep from moving backward. As they deal with how to improve cybersecurity in healthcare, your clients can identify with young Alice. For these customers, the healthcare technology that helps serve patients also opens avenues of attack from cyber predators. As you advise clients with risk management, a keen command of cyber liability insurance solutions is no longer enough. In today’s environment, you must have a working knowledge of the latest security threats and solutions.
With healthcare providers, the mantra of “more cybersecurity training” increasingly falls on deaf ears. From nursing assistants to neurosurgeons, healthcare professionals constantly train to keep up with the latest techniques in their specialties. Taking on additional cybersecurity duties is a profoundly unwelcome burden. As a response to over-stretched human beings, operations-based cybersecurity methods are rapidly gaining ground in healthcare settings. Two words define this new approach: detection and response.
Endpoint Detection and Response
In cybersecurity lingo, endpoints are desktop and notebook computers, smartphones, and tablets. EDR is an evolutionary advance of antivirus software. While antivirus solutions react to cyber threats that match documented attacks, EDR harnesses network-wide machine learning to predict and head off threats. When hosted on a cloud server, this approach streamlines the deployment of updates. EDR has notched some impressive successes in its young history, but the rollout can be bumpy for small clinics with tight budgets and limited IT support.
Extended Detection and Response
XDR extends the philosophy of EDR to servers, multiple networks, and cloud services. More advanced – and pricier – XDR implementations leverage artificial intelligence to provide a coherent overview to the healthcare provider’s security team. Wading through mounds of data logs and event reports, XDR empowers an IT staff by delivering context of potential threats that would take humans hours to derive. While relatively new, XDR aims for the cybersecurity holy grail: picking threat needles from haystacks of data.
Managed Detection and Response
With MDR, fee-based professional management guides the deployment of EDR and XDR tools. This service can be a valuable backstop for healthcare providers with full-time cybersecurity specialists and places professional guidance within reach for clients with smaller budgets. MDR vendors typically offer a menu of services, allowing customers to address the most likely cyber threats as their budgets allow. A welcome benefit of MDR is a dramatic reduction in alert fatigue, the irritating need to deal with software warnings that often turn out to be false alarms.
EDR, XDR, and MDR, mastering operations-based cybersecurity terms can seem overwhelming to insurance agents and clients alike. Nonetheless, the diligence you bring to this effort helps your clients fulfill their healthcare mission.
About Connected Risk Solutions
At Connected Risk Solutions, we use our expertise and experience to provide insurance information and programs to those who serve long-term care and senior living facilities. Since 2007, we’ve been offering insurance and risk management plans designed to help our agents give their clients the ability to achieve continued growth while simultaneously protecting against loss, containing costs and increasing profitability. With three offices to serve you in Chicago, Illinois; Phoenix, Arizona; and Burlington, Connecticut, we do everything we can to make your experience with us as professional and transparent as possible. To learn more, contact us at (877) 890-9301.
