Overcoming Identity and Access Challenges in Healthcare – Source: www.databreachtoday.com

Third-party access management poses significant cybersecurity risks in healthcare, but continuous identity management and monitoring can help mitigate those risks, said Jim Routh, chief trust officer at Saviynt.

A major issue is that healthcare providers often depend on custom applications for identity and access management, which complicates the ability to adapt access rights quickly as roles and services evolve, he said in an interview with Information Security Media Group.

The fluidity of healthcare roles – where specialists and other third parties need temporary or situational access to patient data and operating facilities – demands a dynamic approach to IAM that current systems struggle to support, he said.

“I think the industry overall needs a bit of an investment in maturing identity management practices, perhaps to be less dependent on passwords and more dependent on other authentication capabilities and moving toward real-time [monitoring],” he said.

In this interview (see audio link below photo), Routh also discussed:

• Ransomware and other top cyberthreats facing healthcare sector organizations, and why these incidents are happening from an identity perspective;
• Steps healthcare sector entities should consider to improve identity and access management, including overcoming common obstacles;
• The opportunities generative AI not only provides for enhancing cybersecurity in healthcare but also for cybercriminals to finesse their attacks.

Routh has expertise as a security leader focused on applying risk management discipline to a converged security function for global enterprises to achieve enterprise resilience. He is currently on the boards of several organizations and is the former chair for the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center and a former board member for the Financial Services ISAC.