Skip to main content

Article

HSD Advisory Board Meeting Focused on Healthcare

| Author: HSD Foundation

On 12 October, the HSD Advisory Board gathered for a digital meeting focused on healthcare. An insider perspective was presented by Linda de Lange-Tersteeg (CISO Reinier de Graaf & Langeland Ziekenhuis) with additional remarks of Wim Hafkamp (Director of Z-CERT). What they offered was a clear picture of the digitalisation and increasing connectedness in hospitals and the struggles that come with those developments.

The Board agreed that some of the key challenges that were identified align with current and future initiatives that HSD is working on. To highlight some of these challenges:

  • Creating awareness of (cyber) security can be challenging since most medical professions do not have security awareness as part of their curriculum and the workload and schedule of medical personnel does not always allow them to receive comprehensive courses on security.
  • The technological side is complicated because of lifetime discrepancies between hardware and software products, access to solid technical knowledge and a fragmented landscape of suppliers and providers both within a hospital and in healthcare in general.

Z-CERT and NVZ among others were lauded for the important help they provide hospitals already. Nevertheless, the role of HSD initiatives was considered welcome and necessary. HSD is currently running the following initiatives focused on healthcare:

  • Innovation programme: Cyber resilience through Cyber Metrics in healthcare
  • CISOs from healthcare organisations participate in cross sectoral peer review groups 

The Advisory Board took the issues mentioned to heart and committed HSD Office to explore further initiatives to assist the healthcare sector.