ORAHS2025
Abstract Submission

89. Mapping and assessing cyberattack propagation through digitally interconnected hospitals

Invited abstract in session TA-2: EMS and cyber attacks, stream Sessions.

Tuesday, 9:00-10:30
Room: NTNU, Realfagbygget R8

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Abhilasha Bakre
Faculty of Economics and Management, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

Abstract

Digital technologies are being increasingly adopted in hospitals, rendering them vulnerable to cyberattacks. Recent examples can be found of blocked computer systems, breached intranets and theft of patient data. Their consequences include forcing staff back to offline processes, cancellation of numerous appointments, transferring patients to other hospitals, surgery delays and closing emergency rooms. Additionally, hospitals need to communicate with each other for sharing clinical data, electronic health record, patient management platforms and diagnostic services. An affected hospital could hence act as a vector for a cyberattack to spread to others, causing cascading effects within a healthcare network, shutting down multiple units and disrupting systems. In order to better understand the sequential disruption in clinical services, this study takes a holistic approach by constructing a patient- and data-sharing network to identify the connections between hospitals. The proposed model captures the heterogeneous and inconsistent information security landscape of a hospital, accounting for the complex interrelated structures. An agent-based simulation facilitates analysis of the spread of cyberattacks among various hospitals, in turn providing insights for decision support aimed at ensuring an entire multi-hospital network is more capable of preparing for, responding to and recovering quickly from such attacks in the future.

Keywords

Status: accepted

Back to the list of papers