European hospitals identify third-party vendors as primary weakness


 A new report on cybersecurity in Europe has sounded an alarm: hospitals are moving too slowly to cut off hacked vendors. With European healthcare relying heavily on interconnected digital platforms for everything from prescriptions to imaging, a single hacked vendor can spread chaos across hundreds of hospitals instantly. The report found that while hospitals rely on these "upstream" vendors, only 13% have a tested "kill-switch" to immediately disconnect a compromised partner from their network.

The delay is dangerous. The study reveals that it takes the average hospital about 10 hours to fully revoke a vendor's access after a breach is detected—far too long to stop ransomware from spreading. Ideally, this should happen in under 90 minutes. This "time-to-revoke" gap is now considered a top risk for patient safety. The report urges hospital boards to treat their software vendors as critical infrastructure. To stay safe, hospitals must demand contracts that allow for immediate disconnection and practice these emergency cut-offs regularly, ensuring they can isolate their networks before an infection takes hold.

Read the original article at: https://www.newswire.com/view/content/europes-hospitals-cant-cut-off-hacked-vendors-fast-enough-new-cyber-22686241

 

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