Children's Hospitals Today - Winter 2023 - 17

CYBERSECURITY / FEATURE
SUCCESS STRATEGIES
A seat at the table
Tabletop exercises are critical to
and do the best you can to get the word out, even if it's just people
walking the units. "
In the case of a ransom for a data breach, there's risk to complying
cybersecurity readiness. Here
are four tips for these talks:
Include all key
stakeholders,
including C-level
executives, operations
and legal teams. Typically,
the simulation will involve
about 20 people, but larger
organizations (such as those
closely aligned with an adult
hospital or university) may
require 50 or more participants.
with cybercriminal demands. Sophos reports only 2% of those who
paid received all their data back and the average amount of data recovered
is just 65%. In some cases, the decryption software provided
upon a ransom payment is ineffective or so slow that it can be faster
to rebuild the lost data from backups.
" Even if you do pay, the hole those attackers came in could still be
out there, so you need to fix that before you bring things back online, "
Kopetsky says. " The other piece of this is sometimes the criminal
organization will download your data-and after you pay them to
decrypt your data, they might come back and ransom you again for
the release of the information. "
The ability to recover organizational data after a crisis is largely
Hold them at least
once a year with the
entire stakeholder
group, although it may be
helpful to run separate
exercises with smaller groups
more frequently-especially
for the IT department.
dependent on having the data backed up. There are multiple options
available for backup storage, but the key is ensuring it's not redundant
with your primary data storage method. " If you're hit by ransomware
and you get locked down, it doesn't help if your backup is part of
that lockdown, " Johnson says. " You must have your stuff backed up
somewhere that's accessible to you but not the bad people. "
Perhaps the most important aspect of any response plan is its readiBring
in a third party
to facilitate your
exercises-they can
more effectively build realism
into the practice scenarios and
provide an unbiased critique of
your organization's readiness
and areas for improvement.
ness. Regularly scheduled tabletop exercises are an excellent way to
solidify the plan and staff roles across the organization. " Running a
tabletop exercise of a ransomware attack on your organization with
your senior leaders and your legal team, you recognize these are all
decisions that you're going to have to make really quickly, " Nelson
says. " We don't want to impact patient operations or patient care, and
there are a lot of lessons learned from it. "
Kopetsky says tabletop exercises are most effective when based
on situations that have occurred at other health care institutions
so there's nothing hypothetical about the drill. And he says hospital
leaders who aren't regularly conducting tabletop exercises should
insist upon these eye-opening simulations because they shed light on
exposures to risk.
" I highly recommend them. I don't know if I would call it a good exEscalate
the
simulated problem
gradually, to ensure
everyone knows their role and
proper response for every
possible step during a real crisis.
perience, but it's a necessary one, " Kopetsky says. " No one was laughing
and smiling after our last one, but they definitely were like, 'Wow,
this is important.' "
Megan McDonnell Busenbark is a writer and content strategist
based in Omaha, Nebraska.
Send questions or comments to magazine@childrenshospitals.org.
CHILDREN'S HOSPITALS TODAY Winter 2023
17
Children's Hospitals Today - Winter 2023

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