The healthcare industry is vulnerable to API security and data security problems due to the sensitive personal information contained in medical records. The implementation of a strong API security program leveraging solutions such as Sequence Security is crucial for the protection of APIs from various exploits and attacks. The Sequence Unified API Protection (UAP) solution helps healthcare IT security teams identify miscoded APIs and protect well-formed APIs from bot-generated abuse by addressing all phases of the API security lifecycle.
The healthcare industry is facing a unique challenge when it comes to data security and API security. Sensitive personal data found in medical records can be utilized by cybercriminals for identity theft, insurance fraud, and other nefarious purposes. While APIs can help providers transfer data between billing systems, electronic health records, informational systems, networks, healthcare applications, and devices, they also introduce new security risks that need to be addressed.
To comply with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Interoperability and Patient Access final rule in the United States, providers are increasingly implementing APIs. The HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard is also gaining recognition in the health IT space. In Europe, the e-Health Digital Service Infrastructure (DSI) leverages APIs to connect eHealth national contact points, allowing them to exchange health data.
However, the potential for security breaches is a major concern in the healthcare industry. Recent reports found that healthcare data breaches cost an average of $10 million per incident. Attackers can exploit unsecured APIs to facilitate successful ransomware attacks by gaining access to and encrypting healthcare data. Ransomware and unauthorized access because of API exploits can lead to increased risks for patients and healthcare systems, including patient data leakage and disruptions to emergency care.
To address these challenges, healthcare IT security teams need to implement a strong API security program leveraging solutions such as Sequence Security. The Sequence Unified API Protection (UAP) solution helps healthcare organizations identify miscoded APIs and protect well-formed APIs from bot-generated abuse by addressing all phases of the API security lifecycle.
The Sequence UAP solution provides full visibility of an organization’s attack surface, including cloud hosting services, any associated API endpoints, and servers that may be vulnerable to Log4j and LoNg4j exploits. It also uses sensors and integrates with CDNs and a range of API gateways to provide centralized API visibility and inventory tracking of all the APIs deployed and managed by the respective API gateways. Unregistered or unknown APIs are also discovered, allowing security and development teams to migrate those shadow APIs to the respective API gateway to ensure security and governance policy consistency.
The Sequence UAP solution helps healthcare organizations enforce compliance and governance controls with proactive API risk analysis and remediation. Predefined and custom risk assessment rules help organizations find and remediate coding errors that introduce sensitive data handling and authentication vulnerabilities. It also analyzes APIs leveraging ML-based analysis based on a threat database with millions of records and behavioral fingerprinting, helping to detect and continually track sophisticated API attacks such as ransomware.
The Sequence UAP solution provides flexible, real-time mitigation responses to strengthen healthcare cybersecurity. Real-time responses to API attacks range from basic block and rate limiting to HTTP header insertion and deception, all executed in real-time, per policy or app, without reliance on integration with third-party web application firewalls (WAFs).
