Securing healthcare data: Protecting mainframes during COVID and beyond

Even pre-pandemic, hospitals were prime targets for hackers and other online threats. That condition has only grown worse over the past 18 months, with vaccine infrastructure becoming a tempting target for bad actors in addition to hospital systems’ continuing vulnerability to ransomware attacks.

Hospitals and other healthcare organizations must look for new ways to secure their data, but one area in their IT infrastructure is often overlooked: mainframe security. Ray Overby, co-founder and CTO of Key Resources, Inc., says that while the current healthcare environment has brought attention to the cybersecurity threats facing healthcare organizations, mainframes still fly under the radar. Mainframes are used to manage sensitive patient information, which means their security should be a top priority when it comes to staying compliant with HIPAA and other data regulators.

The challenges surrounding healthcare organization mainframes aren’t new, Overby says. They’re the same old problems, amplified and left unaddressed.

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