KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 18 – Cybercrime is a growing issue for medical device businesses in Southeast Asia, causing significant threats to market growth, according to Fitch Solutions.
The research firm cited cybersecurity firm Kaspersky as saying that attacks on the health care sector have reduced globally.
“In 2019, attacks on medical devices (servers, computers, smartphones, tablets, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and connected hospital machines) have gone down by almost one third when compared to 2018.
“However, although attacks on medical devices have declined globally, the number of reported threats is still very high in many Asian countries, with many countries in the region being listed in Kaspersky’s report,” said Fitch Solutions in a new industry trend analysis.
Fitch Solutions also stated that cyber threats will remain high as investment in cybersecurity continues to lag behind.
“Over the coming years, we believe that cybercrime in Southeast Asia will remain a growing concern as investment in cybersecurity continues to be poor.
“The low number of secure internet servers in most countries makes it easier for cybercriminals to steal data as many networks and online transactions take place on unsecured servers that lack the protection provided by encryption technology,” Fitch further added.
“This exposes businesses and healthcare providers to financial losses and reputational damage, and also compromises patient care and safety.”
Despite concerns about patient data security and confidentiality, the Malaysian government is planning to implement electronic medical records (EMR) with 5G technology by the middle of next year.
“As of now, we have gone into two stages. Firstly, we have done the internal evaluations of strategy, financial and solutions, which is almost done,” Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad previously said.
“Secondly, we will move into the external evaluation stage and we have identified a few entities and companies that we want to work with.
“When all these stages are done, we will be looking at somewhere in the middle of 2020 to kick off the EMR system,” he stated.
