The cybersecurity landscape is changing fast as hospitals and health systems continue to adjust to the new realities of data management and protection and invest in new technologies accordingly, a new study from Frost and Sullivan shows.

WHY IT MATTERS
The market is poised for continued big growth, and could reach $8.7 billion by 2023, say researchers – driven largely by new purchases and deployments as healthcare organizations realize that emerging tech such as internet-of-things, cloud hosting and artificial intelligence are only adding to the complexity of safeguarding patient data.

The report shows that hospital IT investments in the near-term will be focused on areas such as  network perimeter and endpoint protection, access management, exploit detection and mitigation and more.

In addition, F&S sees several trends continuing to shape spending patterns across healthcare organizations. The desire to simplify access control is increasing demand for integrated tools, for instance. And consumerism is reshaping the security space too, as  "more threats will drive consumers to demand protection of their PHI."

Meanwhile, "the demand for cybersecurity expertise is beginning to drive healthcare IT to managed service providers," the report shows, and "new technologies will increase demand for security solutions that can accommodate them."

Still, while spending is on the rise, Frost & Sullivan finds that "budgets for IT generally, and cybersecurity especially, are not growing as fast as the threat is," researchers said. Other complicating factors include the fact that, "in the cybersecurity bidding war, the healthcare industry is often priced out."

Add to that the fragmented nature of hospital infrastructure: "With hundreds of applications and multiple EHRs – each with security layers – the lack of a standardized security approach complicates security investment priorities."

THE LARGER TREND
Another key market driver in the years ahead, according to Frost & Sullivan, is the fact that "regulation such as HIPAA and HITECH will drive adoption of cybersecurity solutions." Indeed, even as some health systems are charging ahead with innovative IoT and AI deployments, many are still grappling with the basics of HIPAA compliance, as another recent report showed.

And the report's finding that healthcare security spending is not increasing at a rate that's commensurate with the cyber threat is borne out by some of our recent reporting.

Sill, most hospitals are cognizant of the wide array of IT and devices that need protecting, and are making smart and tailored investments to do that. Take the example of Marin General, which has recently done some substantial work to efficiently protect one of its most vulnerable technologies: printers.

"Printers combine the characteristics and threat landscapes of both IoT and servers, so they are unique," explained Jason Johnson, Marin General's information security officer. "We already had security software productions in place, like vulnerability management software, security information event management software and others, but those solutions did not include printers."

ON THE RECORD
"The healthcare market is a prime target of hackers looking for protected health information," said Mike Jude, digital health research manager at Frost & Sullivan in a statement. "The lack of cybersecurity expertise is prompting healthcare IT organizations to seek managed support, which, in turn, is accelerating the move to cloud-based computing services.

"To make optimum use of the opportunities, cybersecurity vendors need to develop solutions that integrate with existing healthcare IT systems and application," he added. "The solutions must be able to accommodate and scale with new technologies such as IoT, cloud, and big data."

Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com

Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.