The Dangers Surrounding Bits and Bytes

In a video interview with Pharma Commerce, Jeffrey Bernstein, director of cybersecurity and data privacy for Kaufman Rossin’s risk advisory services, outlined the top mistakes healthcare organizations make in software development and maintenance from a security standpoint, including a lack of incident response plan; inadequate data encryption; absence of multi-factor authentication; neglecting security development lifecycle (SDL) practices; infrequent security updates and patching; and ignoring regulatory compliance. Bernstein emphasized that proactive security measures and regulatory compliance are essential for healthcare software management. He also dove into some of the most common cyber threats companies are facing, and how he envisions those threats changing over the next decade.

A transcript of Bernstein’s conversation with PC can be found below.

PC: How do you envision these cyber threats evolving over the next decade?

Bernstein: Nico, one of the areas where we may see increased activities over the next 10 years is when it comes to geopolitical tensions. Some of these wars that we're observing on the news every night could spill over into cyber warfare situations where you have a smaller country with less of an arsenal—in order to compete with its adversary—going out and carrying out these asymmetric warfare attacks where they're targeting critical infrastructures. That would include healthcare, government services, transportation, the water and utility systems, and then also things like the power grid and the financial and banking system. This is very concerning because these types of attacks can very quickly lead to cascading consequences, which are very difficult to recover from. I think it's safe to say that we may see bullets and bombs replaced with bits and bytes in the coming years, and it's something you know, that's very scary but also realistic.