Page 47 - Cyber Defense eMagazine April 2021 Edition

As a result, governments need to conduct public education campaigns that prioritize accurate
information. At the same time, they must coordinate large-scale, logistically challenging vaccination drives.
Those dueling priorities often result in chaos.

Hackers watch these news cycles just like everyone else. Both good news and bad news give them ample
opportunity to take advantage of peoples’ vulnerability or generosity. The environment is ripe for disinforma-
tion and cyberattacks, which means phishing or malware campaigns could target
specific medical providers or even the general population. Vaccine-related intellectual property is also highly
valuable, so pharma companies are easy targets.

While physical security to protect against theft or intentional mishandling is still vital, in-depth
cybersecurity strategies are essential to protect trade secrets, patents, clinical trial data, supply paths, and
development and manufacturing agreements.

Medical providers must identify the eligible individuals in every vaccination tier to ensure equitable, efficient,
and speedy distribution. Since many vaccines require two doses for full efficacy, public health authorities
need to retain accurate data on which individuals already received shots from which manufacturers and en-
sure they get the correct second dose.

Countries employing so-called “vaccine passports” as part of the reopening process also possess a treasure
trove of privacy-sensitive information. They need a thorough account of which individuals, private entities,
and government authorities can access this data.

Ensuring total and pervasive visibility into this potentially overwhelming volume of vaccine
information is critical to secure it, so the expected guardian does not become an unwilling sieve to extract or
adulterate information.

Behind the scenes, industry-proven management systems should share the same underlying
packet data, allowing network and operations teams to make decisions in concert. These tools need to fa-
cilitate quick detection, investigation, and response to threats while making it easy to integrate with security
information and event management (SIEM) platforms.

Hybrid cloud approaches are best because they integrate traditional network architectures in a physical data
center. That way, healthcare IT professionals will retain visibility as they migrate to the cloud or roll out native
applications. Tools with agentless packet access and cloud-resident virtual instrumentation add minimal load
to any cloud infrastructure.

But gaining a pervasive view is only the beginning. It is increasingly difficult for cybersecurity teams to rely
solely upon log-based data for threat detection, investigation, and remediation. Industry
professionals realize that wire-based metadata and packets contain the single source of truth. Whether se-
curing an internal corporate network, remote office location, or cloud environment,
medical enterprises and public health authorities need an intelligent retrieval system that
investigates and remediates breaches quickly.

47 Cyber Defense eMagazine – April 2021 Edition
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