Why Combatting Cyber-Crime Is Critical For Life Science Companies

Biotech and pharmaceutical firms hold vast amounts of valuable data and information making them prime targets for cyber-attacks - so how are they protecting themselves?

In the American political thriller series, Homeland, a vice presidential candidate's pacemaker was attacked by offshore terrorists, inducing a heart attack that resulted in his untimely death. In the real world, when Dick Cheney was serving as the 46th vice president of the United States between 2001 and 2009, he famously deactivated the connectivity on his pacemaker so as to prevent anything similar from taking place.

The threat to medical devices may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but in the US, healthcare is now the largest target of cyber security attacks, reportedly at greater risk than manufacturing and banking¹. According to experts, the value of stolen personal health information is ten to twenty times greater than the value of a stolen credit card number.