Hospitals and other providers need health data security tools to help reduce risks as well as prevent attacks and breaches of data. Such security leaks can harm organizations financially and legally. But to help address the new threats regularly faced by healthcare groups successfully, companies need to consider upgrading their cybersecurity tools to better protect themselves against newer and more sophisticated attacks on healthcare data security involving phishing, spoofing, ransomware and identity theft.

The first step towards successful safety in healthcare is to select the right set of products to address the specific security gaps that an organization may have. IT departments should compare different tools based on these eight key areas as part of the purchasing process.

Artificial Intelligence

Healthcare data security tools must be able to identify malicious activities by analyzing what is going on inside the network or machine and then detecting any anomalies that signal an attack or attempted ongoing attack.Artificial intelligence is an essential part of this protection strategy, and while not all protection tools include this type of advanced threat detection, such as IBM Security Intelligence Operations and QRadar Advisor with Watson and Deep Discovery’s Trend Micro Advanced Threat Detection are examples of smart security platforms that can block more advanced threats

Email Protection

Through fooling users into clicking links or downloading attachments that provide remote access to hackers or execute malicious code like ransomware, attackers target email users to gain access to networks. Health IT buyers should consider cybersecurity tools that provide email protection services against phishing, spoofing, spam and viruses in order to help defend the email front.  FireEye Email Threat Prevention Platform and Cisco Email Security are some of the products available with these capabilities on the marketplace.

Keep watching this space for more.