Is the US health care system a target for cyberterrorism?
December 19, 2012  (Credit: stock image)  Cyber threats are on
the rise, and U.S. health care organizations must be better
prepared to deal with them, according to an open-access article
in Telemedicine and e-Health.  The health care system in the
U.S. is a $2.5 trillion industry and depends heavily on
communication and the transfer of information via the Internet.
This puts it at ever-increasing risk of a cyberterrorism attack,
which could jeopardize lives and threaten patient care and
privacy, the authors point out.  What Is the risk for Healthcare
Targets?  The risk has become more acute in larger healthcare
organizations such as hospitals, which have moved away from
stand-alone workstations to more tightly integrated platforms
attached to networks, according to the authors. It is now common
for these networks to link a variety of IT workstations such as
admissions, clinical laboratory, pharmacy, radiology, and the
billing department.  Networks als