Kaspersky has announced that they are supporting medical organisations in order to help them stay protected from cyberthreats during the pandemic.
Kaspersky will offer provide 6 months of free access to the following list of business products and services:
- Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud Plus,
- Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365,
- Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business Advanced
- Kaspersky Hybrid Cloud Security.
Healthcare and medical organisations are often 24×7 operations and require high availability, meaning its extremely critical for healthcare organisations to stay secure.
Ensuring patient data is also protected, comes not only with commercial motivations, but can also attract fines, if appropriate efforts to secure the data were not made. While undertaking an entire IT overhaul during the pandemic is probably unlikely, ensuring computers and accounts are security is simply smart.
In the current situation, medical organizations are under extreme pressure and have to mobilise all their forces to help people in this very challenging time. Unfortunately, hackers don’t often rest and attacks can happen at any time.
Hospitals and medical institutions often store very personal information that could be used against a person if it was leaked, and there’s always the risk of identity theft, should details like phone numbers, home addresses and medicare numbers get breached.
In an ideal world, doctor’s offices and hospitals would have the best IT systems, protected by the best security policies, however it is often the case that once a system is established, it is not upgraded for many years.
We’ve all probably been to a doctor and glanced at their screen, only to see them still running Windows 7, or worse, some 10 years after it’s release date.
To help medical organisations cope with the unprecedented pressure and help relieve cybersecurity risks that may arise during this period, Kaspersky has made its B2B solutions available for free.
“In this critical situation, healthcare institutions are under immense pressure and carry huge responsibility while saving people’s lives and fighting against the infection. Doctors, nurses and all medical staff take on most of the load and therefore need any support possible. We feel that it is our duty to support the medical community.
In order to help these organisations focus on what matters most, we now offer healthcare institutions free licenses for key Kaspersky corporate products for a six-month period.”
Evgeniya Naumova, Vice President of the Global Sales Network at Kaspersky.
“We hope that during this time of uncertainty, private and public healthcare organisations across ANZ are able to take advantages of this offer. It is one less headache that your security and IT departments need not worry about.”
Closer to home, General Manager of Kaspersky ANZ, Margrith Appleby
Along with this initiative, Kaspersky also suggests that medical institutions follow cybersecurity practices and implement the following measures as soon as possible:
- Schedule basic security awareness education for both medical personnel and administration employees – it should cover the most essential practices such as passwords and accounts, email security, use of USB devices, PC security and safe web browsing. Explain to the hospital’s staff that there is an increasing risk of cyberthreats for healthcare IT systems.
- It is the right time to check the hospital’s protection solution, make sure it is up to date, configured properly and covers all employees’ devices. Switch on a firewall to enable protection from threats coming from the internet. The security solution should enable protection from ransomware as it one of the common threats for medical organisations.
- Ensure all specific medical devices are properly configured and updated, such as ventilators. If there is a chance that the number of such devices increases rapidly, develop a dedicated procedure to quickly install and configure all new devices.
- Some hospitals urgently hire new staff which means growing the number of endpoints, including new employees’ personal devices. This can damage visibility and control over corporate IT, so IT services should pay special attention to adding protection to these new devices. It’s better to have security profiles, policies and licenses in advance to just add them to new devices when needed.
- Make sure your current security solution enables purchasing of enough licenses for the increasing number of devices.
For more detailed information about the offering and its availability please visit Kaspersky business blog and contact Kaspersky or its resellers.
