We look at the rapid rise of Sasa Software, and ask; has their time come?
The image of Oren Dvoskin, Commercial Manager at Sasa Software, sitting in his nondescript office, black t-shirt and headphones, looks Californian, as he spells out the pessimism of his profession.
“There are two types of hospital” – he says; “those that have been hacked and know it; and those that have been hacked, but don’t know it.”
Oren’s office is nowhere near Orange County. It is on the border of Israel and Lebanon. If anyone knows about pessimism, it is he. As Sasa Software prepare to face its growing and exponential market at HIMSS 2017 – it surely does not get any more black than this.
Cyber hacking and ransomware, is growing to the point where it cannot be ignored and assumed it is for someone else. But its growth is not the most alarming feature. It is that, for hospitals, any cyber attack would have to be pre-meditated and unique and specifically tailored to find the weak spot, the easiest point of entry, into that particular hospital.
What is worse is – because health records (which are the prime target) are deeply personal and full of personal ID info – any attack is inevitably immediately visible. Unlike say a Bank etc, a Hospital cannot pretend it has not happened and just pay the money.
This is no simple phishing attack.
What that means is, and why Sasa Software believe that this 2017 will be our most “challenging”, i.e. most concerted and worrying – is that Hospitals are still not waking up to this important threat, despite the evidence that 75% have suffered some sort of breach – and that is just those that are publicly noted.
The answer, according to Oren – is to have a mix of baseline protection, the sort that all of us have on our PCs and office servers and Cloud access. This stops the initial and simplest access. But to combat the precise and targeted attack mentioned above, Sasa take the view that every incoming email, data request, every file transfer – is a threat of some sort. Their range of solutions is designed to neutralise any incoming malware or suspicious entry, at source.
But it is also a realisation that files we take for granted – the DICOM image, the voice recording – that we regularly append to our EHR records, are the new source of threat. Viewing images online across the globe, that holy grail of Clinical Consultant interoperability – may be the one area that is the chiles heel for the modern Hospital.
If there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it is not in the fingers crossed hope that that things can get better,. It is the realisation that you can do something about it. Oren is a philosopher with a positive view of human nature, despite the nature of his profession and the market he develops.
The cost of your sorting out a cyber attack ranges from $230.00 – $400.00 per patient record. Sasa Software will be addressing both the Pharma and Clinical markets at HIMSS. Worth having a serious chat.
ProfoMedia 