The following is a sneak peek of the Summer 2023 edition of RxInformer. Additionally, Healthe’s Director of IT Security, Tony Brown, will present on the related presentation Prioritizing Cybersecurity Strategies Amid the IT Talent Gap at RISKWORLD 2023 on May 2nd.
Across all industries, the demand for cybersecurity is greater than ever. As employees, partners, and customers increasingly want to consume information digitally, there is a need to push information to more endpoint devices. At the same time, the threat landscape is continually evolving, with attacks that are more difficult to detect and defend.
From 2020-2021, the percentage of technologies in deployment for security purposes rose from 15% to 84%, and IT leaders who are planning to increase security technology investments rose from 31% to 64% during the same period. But available talent to execute on these cybersecurity investments is in short supply.
In 2022, the global cybersecurity workforce grew to encompass 4.7 million people, reaching its highest-ever levels. However, there is still a need for more than 3.4 million security professionals, an increase of over 26% from 2021’s numbers. Research also shows that cybersecurity demand is twice as great as supply.
The problem is compounded for workers’ comp organizations, which are highly valuable cyber targets due to the large quantities of confidential data – personal health information – they store and the estimated value for each compromised record. As of 2022, the healthcare industry was the most expensive for data breach costs for the 12th consecutive year, with an average of $10.1 million per incident.
According to Tony Brown, Director, Information Security at Healthesystems and a 30-year cybersecurity veteran, “As a cybersecurity professional, we are hard-pressed to not only secure our sensitive data but also remain vigilant of the ever-changing landscape that is being targeted by hackers. It is a significant challenge for us that only grows larger each day as malicious actors have the upper hand with the availability of emerging tools and techniques capable of exploiting vulnerabilities in a variety of different ways.”
