Ken Dort Quoted in Modern Healthcare on Cyberattacks of Medical Devices

Chicago partner Ken Dort was recently quoted in a Modern Healthcare article titled, “Could medical devices be used in an attack like the one that took down Twitter?” Recently, Twitter, Spotify and other popular web services have been the victims of massive cyber-attacks. Concerns have since been raised about the possibility of health care devices being hacked in similar ways.

Ken offered his perspective on the idea that web-connected medical devices and equipment could be targeted in similar attacks: “Cameras and DVRs used in the attack were rudimentary devices with manufacturer-default security that isn't able to be changed by the consumer. Security settings on medical equipment, however, can generally be configured to the specifications of provider information technology specialists.”

Ken then noted that health care companies work very hard to secure their products given the critical nature of the information they have on hand. “Data security is foremost on their minds, and I'm just not aware of a situation where they would go forward and provide less-than-optimal security.”

Read: “Could medical devices be used in an attack like the one that took down Twitter?”