Importance of Cyber Security for Pharmaceutical Organizations

67% of targeted attacks whether malware or phishing are aimed at lower level management, this was the cause of an increase in attacks on higher management and executive level personnel.

With the landscape for cyber security constantly changing and evolving, cyber criminals are attacking fortune 500 as well as private SMB’s which is why having a cyber security solution for your business is more important now than ever before.

Beyond the costs of being breached, consider how much of your business can be compromised which would not be limited to monetary loss but reputational as well. A Cyber breach on any company leaves them and their counterparts vulnerable to more attacks in the form of phishing and spear phishing. All of this can lead to compromisation of proprietary digital assets, private information exposure and overall damage to mission critical functions and what’s worse is that 60% of all SMB’s end up closing shop within 6 months of a breach.

It’s not surprising to know that Pharmaceutical companies are the equivalent of a buffet of information for any cyber criminal to capitalize on. Think about it, proprietary information on patented drugs, data related to advancements and new technologies not to mention patient information are all sensitive information that are huge losses for any company to lose eroding patient and consumer trust.

A comprehensive cyber security protocol is vital to safeguarding these valuable digital assets. It’s important to have a robust and flexible strategy in order to stay on top of security threats.

Considering how long it takes to complete a clinical trial, would you imagine having to re-do the entire trial all over again because security breach?

Many have started heeding to the wake up call that is generally needed by pharmaceutical companies to practice a higher level of cyber security, unfortunately this was due to many getting hacked and making headline news.
Traditionally, cyber security was a means to find a threat that we’re unbeknownst to them instead of having a properly implemented cyber security solution that ran parallel to the organization's operation. Its main purpose was to find the user that was intruding in the system and then proceed to forensics to determine how they gained access and what information was compromised because of it. This situation create a breach for any individual or company that is sharing files or folders across the network, not to mention not knowing how much of what was actually compromised or used for purposes other than the ones intended.

LifeLabs: 15million Canadian customers affected.
Transunion: 37 000 Canadian customers affected.
Equifax:143 Million customers affected globally
CapitalOne: 106 million records
Evite:100 Million records
DoorDash: 4.9 Million records
AMCA: 20 million records
Zoll Medical: 277000 records
Georgia Tech: 1.3Million
FEMA: 2.3 million records

The most valuable information that a pharmaceutical company wants to maintain top secret are secret formulas that make the proprietary drugs. This makes them very attractive to criminals due to the incredible value that’s attached to those formulas and sensitive data which can be sold on the black market

Having the latest cyber security strategy means nothing if your employees are not trained. The responsibility falls on every single person that makes up part of the organization to be vigilant and assume some responsibility for whom they communicate with, but, without proper guidelines or process, it can leave the organization as a whole in jeopardy of an attack, thus creating more vulnerabilities. Cyber security companies can address all these issues and help SMBs of all sizes create a tailored solution for their needs

Can you imagine getting hacked due to an HVAC tech laptop that was compromised with malware ? Think about it, they’re not part of the organization, but the physical presence of a hacked computer made it so that they we’re in the building and used the network to access the network and now your entire business can be accessed from the other side of the world.

Its very important for organizations to understand that this is very likely to happen anytime and anywhere. With a rigorous cyber security solution, you’re organization can work in complete control of threat that it may encounter and as for our HVAC friend the system can monitor any point of access that it doesn’t recognise and prompt it for security purposes. With the millions of devices roaming around every single day, you need a proper cyber security for your pharmaceutical organization.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

What is SIEM? In Short, it’s software products and services combined to deliver real-time analysis of security alerts generated by application and network hardware. In other words, it’s the equivalent of the “eye in the sky” that you’d find in a Casino.

It’s your way to Monitor, Remediate and continuously hunt for threats.

https://secur-itech.com/cyber

Threat Hunting and Vulnerability Detection services provide an opportunity for organizations to detect, investigate and remediate potential or successful attacks on their systems, networks, and applications. Cyber security companies can provide you with the backend infrastructure, implementation services and threat hunting procedures. As always there is not one size fits all solution therefore it’s important that both the organization and the cybersecurity service provider learn about the ecosystem in order to properly adhere to its challenges.

We want to thank you for taking the time to read this article and we hope that you remain vigilant in your day to day operations. If you have any questions regarding cyber security or would like to find out how to best protect your organization, please don’t hesitate to contact us Via email or fill a form on our site and it would be a great pleasure to get in contact with you.

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