Cyber Threats to Medical Imaging Systems and How to Address Them

A recent report by ProPublica showed that medical imaging data of over 5 million patients in the United States are publicly available on the internet. As a result of 187 misconfigured servers, medical imaging data, often containing identifiable patient information that should be protected, is "sitting unprotected on the internet and available to anyone with basic computer expertise." Researchers discovered over 13.7 million medical tests, including 400,000 with downloadable images. These imaging records were stored on servers, including systems used for archiving medical images, without a robust solution in place to monitor for unauthorized changes or to ensure the servers were securely configured and in compliance with regulatory standards. These medical images include MRI, X-Rays and accompanying identifiable patient data that could be used for blackmail.