Cybersecurity Alert Fatigue in Healthcare IT Security Operations
Imagine having a job where you do nothing more than respond to events with no clear resolution. While you are trying to solve one problem, 10 more show up, then 20, and then 30. Cybersecurity teams live with this reality of increasing alert volume, alert fatigue, false alarms, and hundreds of thousands of actual threats entering the hospital network.
A decade after a key AACN Advanced Critical Care article, alarm fatigue remains a concern for researchers, clinicians, and organizations.
“It leads to missed alarms medical errors causing patient deaths, increased workloads, burnout, a drop in job satisfaction, and hinders patient recovery.”
Are you seeing increased cyberattacks against your medical records and other data sources?
Learn about a fresh approach to cybersecurity and a better way to deal with the overwhelming volume of excessive alerts with the NovaMDR offering from the team at ForeNova!
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How Has Alert Fatigue Affected the Healthcare Industry?
With the increase in cyberattacks and their effects on SecOps resources, hackers know it is only a matter of time before their attack vectors find their targets within a healthcare network. Hackers, like hospitals and medical providers, continue to invest in AI and ML to increase their attack velocity and complexity.
Healthcare providers holding back on investing in AI-defensive tools, additional training, and recruitment of SecOps talent, including skilled security analysts, will quickly expose their applications, medical records, and all IP-enabled medical devices to internal and external hackers.
In healthcare, for example, once a medical provider switched from paper to electronic medical records (EMR), the number of cyberattacks and malicious activities tripled quickly.
This increase in attack vectors, combined with the lack of human capital resources and updated tools powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), created an unsustainable work environment for SecOps engineers and other organization members. Alert fatigue continues to impact healthcare organizations.
This constant game of catch-up became the interesting reality security operations engineers face daily. They try to resolve genuine threats while dealing with increasing security alerts that turn out to be false positives. Cyberattacks’ velocity and sheer volume grow daily across every market sector, including healthcare, finance, and government. High-priority alerts mix with low-level alerts as more legacy security systems cannot understand the new alerts, including next-generation malware activity.
Hackers leverage AI to adjust their various attack vectors quickly, alter their destinations, and increase the attack volume within seconds.
AI-defensive tools are essential to stop AI-offensive tools used by hackers.
Impact of Alert Fatigue on Patient Data Protection
A 2023 study found that 62% of healthcare IT staff felt unprepared for rising cybersecurity threats.
Failing to keep pace with AI-enabled cyberattacks against healthcare systems results in data breaches, account takeovers, and even the shutdown of critical emergency room equipment. The increased volume of security incidents is only one part of the problem. Notification fatigue, adjusting alert thresholds, and overall mental health become even more significant challenges for healthcare providers.
Why Are Healthcare Providers a Prime Target for Hackers?
EHRs are valuable to cybercriminals, containing medical records, diagnoses, and billing information. The average cost of a data breach is $10.93 million, making healthcare the most affected industry.
“Reports show the value of a health record can be worth as much as $1,000, whereas on the dark web, a credit card number is worth $5 and Social Security numbers are worth $1.”
Ransomware Continues to be a Top Attack Vector
“Ransomware is a significant threat to healthcare, making up 54% of cyber incidents per ENISA.”
Alarmingly, nearly half led to data breaches, like the Vice Society attack on the Parisian maternity hospital Pierre Rouquès—Les Bluets. After the hospital refused to pay the ransom, the Vice Society released 150 GB of patient data on the dark web.
What Are the Top Healthcare Cyberattacks in Germany in 2024?
Like others in the EU, German healthcare providers faced a considerable amount of cyberattacks in 2024. These attacks focus on several attack vectors, including phishing, resulting in ransomware malware, attacks on Internet-of-things (IoT) devices, and data exfiltration from EMR systems.
As the medical industry continues investing in digital transformation, including cloud-based applications, fatigue will probably impact its SecOps resources.
Mittelfranken District Hospital
The Mittelfranken District Hospital is one of many victims of hacker attacks. In recent months, there has been a particular increase in attacks on hospitals.
Unknown individuals accessed the IT systems of Middle Franconia District Hospitals and encrypted data. The timeline for restoring systems after the attack is uncertain. As a precaution, all systems have been disconnected. Hospital management promptly informed relevant authorities, including the police and data protection officials.
Wertach clinics in Bobingen and Schwabmünchen
“According to the report, the server systems’ failure severely restricted clinic operations, forcing them to switch to an analog emergency structure. The clinic canceled planned operations, and further cancellations are possible.”
A hacker attacks targeted Reinhardshausen’s Spa Park Clinic.
Hackers attacked Klinik Kurpark’s central data system. The clinic is resolving the issue and maintaining transparent communication with affected parties.
Law enforcement reported that a urological follow-up treatment clinic was “attacked by cybercriminals on August 27th,” disrupting central IT systems. Technicians quickly isolated, checked, and secured the systems and immediately took measures to contain the incident.
Enabling AI and ML for Healthcare SecOps Automation
Alert fatigue continued to impact traditional SecOps within healthcare, resulting in cybersecurity branches. As more healthcare invests in AI SecOps, the more significant the positive impact they have, reducing alert fatigue while blocking more active attacks.
AI SecOps includes several pillars, including:
AI-Powered Threat Detection
AI-driven threat detection relies on machine learning algorithms to analyze network traffic, user behavior, and threat intelligence feeds. This capability allows the AI to learn and differentiate between normal and abnormal activities, improving the accuracy of threat alerts and detecting anomalies sooner to reduce significant breach risks.
Automated Incident Response
Automated incident response allows AI systems to execute predefined playbooks to contain threats. For instance, AI can quarantine infected devices or block malicious IP addresses immediately upon detection. This swift action helps curb the spread of malware and minimize system damage.
Automation of Routine Tasks
AI streamlines routine security tasks by automating patch management, malware scanning, and network monitoring. This process allows human experts to focus on complex issues while ensuring consistent application of basic security measures, lowering the risk of human error.
Increase Security Awareness Training for the User Community
Healthcare workers use email extensively, along with patient portal applications. Extending access to cybersecurity education will help them become more aware of these attacks and understand their impact on the healthcare system by providing security awareness and attack simulation exercises.
Fact: Most importantly, preventing more attacks at the user level reduces the number of alerts SecOps teams must handle.
The Future of Cybersecurity for Healthcare in 2025
2025 for healthcare will be far more than just AI-powered new cybersecurity tools. New US and EU compliance mandates will profoundly impact the healthcare industry.
U.S. lawmakers have introduced two bills, the Healthcare Cybersecurity Act of 2024 and HISAA, to enhance protections for sensitive health data. However, they remain stalled in the legislative process and are not yet law.
Focusing on the Healthcare Mission
Healthcare providers aim to enhance patient outcomes. However, cybersecurity’s increasing complexity diverts focus and resources. Outsourcing cybersecurity functions allows organizations to prioritize care delivery while keeping systems secure.
In 2025, healthcare cybersecurity protection and success depend on leveraging the right partnerships, technologies, and strategies to protect what is essential.
What is the role of Managed Detection and Response (MDR)?
As AI SecOps tools advance in functionality and effectiveness for the healthcare industries, these tools do not configure themselves, nor are they a plug-and-play-and-forget solution.
Healthcare struggling with access to financial capital and SecOps engineering talent look to MDR providers like ForeNova to help.
Why ForeNova?
MDR providers like ForeNova have experience with AI tools, access to global engineering talent, and a proven proactive approach that aligns with healthcare operations requirements and compliance mandates.
The cost is significant for healthcare providers looking to leverage NovaMDR by ForeNova. The ForeNova team understands the financial challenges more healthcare providers face in Germany and continues to develop cost-saving licensing and service models embedded within the NovaMDR offering.
NovaMDR by ForeNova helps organizations phase out legacy security devices, improve their cybersecurity posture, reduce the need to hire additional talent, and enhance overall security response.
Stopping cyberattacks begins with partnering with an MDR provider like ForeNova, which understands the landscape facing German healthcare SecOps engineers experiencing alert fatigue.
Click here to schedule your free demo of NovaMDR today!
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