HIROC Cyber Preparedness Workshop - Q&A
As our Cyber Preparedness Workshop approaches on May 15, we sat down with Kopiha Nathan, HIROC's Lead, Privacy & Compliance Officer to learn more about the importance of this workshop and cyber related practices.
How is this workshop beneficial for those in the healthcare space, especially those in privacy, risk, and leadership?
The workshop’s overall focus is on cyber resiliency. In the environment of connected healthcare, cyber security is paramount to ensure protection of operations of technology as well as protection of personal health information and personal information.
Healthcare organizations in Canada continue to be targeted by cyber threat actors and fall victim to cyber-attacks such as ransomware attack, business email compromise, etc. HIROC’s cyber workshop provides a variety of cyber resiliency-based sessions geared towards our subscriber’s privacy, risk management and leadership teams. It provides an amazing opportunity for healthcare leaders to connect and learn from experiences shared through the lens of various experts that have experience managing cyber breaches or have experience building resilient cyber programs.
We’re bringing back our most requested session - the interactive cyber tabletop exercise. What are the benefits of joining this exercise?
Cyber tabletop exercises are one of the most popular sessions at HIROC Cyber Workshop. During this interactive exercise portion of the tabletop exercise, the audience get to experience a real-life cyber breach scenario being presented in a discussion-based injects and Q&As.
These sessions are designed to create a judgement free environment for our participants to share their thoughts, recommendations and questions openly. Subscribers often express that they find these sessions valuable as they take back questions to the team to evaluate their own incident response plan.
Why is it crucial for organizations to be up to date on emerging cyber related issues?
Our technology environment is in constant change or evolution to accommodate business needs or technological advancements. As changes and new enhancements are introduced to our environment, new cyber risk exposures are also introduced in the form of new vulnerabilities. This opens up opportunities for potential cyber-attacks. Additionally, technological innovations create opportunities and risks at the same time. For example, Artificial Intelligence (AI) aids in the protection again cyber threat by augmenting tools and technology used for cyber protection. AI is also used by cyber criminal to design and deliver cyber-attacks. Organizations have to keep abreast of all relevant emerging cyber threat intelligence to be able to protect their own environment in this ever-changing landscape.
Which session are you looking forward to the most and why?
I always enjoy tuning into subscriber cyber breach stories. Stories are a powerful way of sharing knowledge and I learn something new all the time at these sessions.
What’s one thing you hope organizations take away from this workshop?
Cyber breaches are a common occurrence in Canada in healthcare sector. I hope that organizations realize it’s important to have cyber incident response plans defined and tested.
Have you registered for the virtual forum?