One year into the PANACEA Research project, we spoke to our partners about the challenges and ambitions of promoting a people-centric, secure environment in healthcare systems throughout Europe.

The project's goal is to improve the technological and human defences of healthcare organisations as a whole ecosystem, and to boost their cybersecurity level, by following a holistic approach that look beyond the pure technology aspects to embrace human factors and aspect.

The reason behind this is the awareness that a massive amount of personal health information is constantly shared via networks and devices, above all inside the hospitals - a sector regulated by very complex compliance requirements.

It is of utmost importance that such information doesn't fall in the wrong hands.

The risk of this happening ranges from the deliberate exploitation of highly sensitive medical data, to other immediately perceivable risks, such as patients not being able to receive treatment, in the event of a ransomware attack shutting down a whole emergency department.

On the other hand, this sector is not as advanced as others, when it comes to IT infrastructures, their usage and the staff training.

PANACEA Research deals with understanding human behaviour in this context and how to positively influence it. It tackles interoperability in between health organisations in the same or other countries.

It aims at developing a toolkit made up of a complex software, and at demonstrating its efficacy in improving cybersecurity awareness and resilience among the medical sector.

Moreover, it suggests a unique governance process to maintain distinct sources of confidential information, thus helping and teaching hospitals how to protect themselves.

 

 

Interviews with:

  • Ivan Tesfai, RINA-C
  • Lynne Coventry, UNAN
  • Simone Lenti, UNIROME
  • Silvia Garbin, AON
  • Aristodemos Pnevmatikakis, I-Sprint
  • Matteo Merialdo, RHEA
  • Sabina Magalini, FPG
  • Emmanouil Spanakis, FORTH
  • Silvia Bonomi, UNIROME