Strengthening Healthcare Operations Through Cyber Resilience

The new foundation for healthcare stability

Healthcare depends on trust. Every clinical workflow, every care decision and every patient interaction relies on systems that must stay available and secure. As your organization adopts more digital platforms, from EHRs and clinical imaging systems to connected medical devices and patient engagement tools, the stakes rise. That reality became clear in 2024 when more than 276 million patient records were exposed, showing how modern threats can overwhelm traditional security programs.

You already know cybersecurity is essential, but the challenge has shifted. Today, the question isn’t whether you prevent every attack. It’s whether your clinical operations continue when something goes wrong. Cyber resilience provides that capability. It gives you the operational strength to anticipate disruption, withstand impact and recover with confidence while protecting patient data and maintaining trust.

Moving beyond compliance to operational resilience

Many healthcare security programs were designed around compliance reporting and regulatory requirements. Compliance still matters, but the threat landscape demands a broader, operational model. You need an approach that connects security, continuity and patient safety into one coordinated strategy.

That’s the purpose of our new white paper, Strengthening Healthcare Operations Through Cyber Resilience. It breaks down the four pillars that help you build a stronger foundation:

1. Business impact analysis
Understand which systems and processes are essential to patient care, revenue and daily operations. When you know exactly what matters most, you can prioritize protection and recovery with greater precision.

2. Enhanced business continuity planning
Move from static binders to dynamic, well-tested plans. Effective continuity work identifies how systems fail, how quickly services must return and which dependencies need isolation or backup.

3. Isolated recovery environments (IREs)
Recover from a secure, standalone environment designed to remain safe even if production systems are compromised. IREs help you restore critical services faster and with greater integrity.

4. Infrastructure as code (IaC)
Use automated, repeatable configuration definitions to rebuild environments quickly and accurately. IaC reduces guesswork and speeds up recovery after an attack.

Together, these pillars form a resilience-driven operating model that strengthens every part of your digital ecosystem.

Why cyber resilience matters now

The financial impact of a breach is significant, with the average cost in healthcare reaching $10.1 million and roughly 21 days of downtime, but the operational consequences are even more urgent. When systems fail, patient care slows. Clinical workflows stall. Decisions take longer. That disruption can have real-world consequences.

Recent studies show what you may already be seeing across the industry:

• 70% of attacks delay patient services
• 56% postpone diagnostic tests or procedures
• 28% correlate with increased patient mortality

These numbers highlight the reason cyber resilience has become central to operational strategy. Downtime affects more than revenue or reputation. It affects clinical integrity, care delivery and patient outcomes. A resilient model helps you reduce that risk and strengthen your ability to operate confidently in a connected environment.

Building a more resilient future

Resilience begins long before an incident. You can take meaningful steps now that build real strength across your organization:

• Run scenario-based simulations that mimic real-world attacks
• Validate continuity plans under pressure, not just on paper
• Establish out-of-band communication channels that remain usable even if identity systems are compromised
• Automate recovery processes to accelerate the path back to normal operations

Each step builds more stability into your environment and gives your teams clarity during high-stress moments. When your security, governance and operations functions align around a resilience-focused approach, you create a health system that can protect patients, preserve uptime and sustain trust, even during disruption.

Cyber resilience doesn’t replace cybersecurity. It elevates it. It helps you deliver dependable care with greater confidence and positions your organization for long-term stability in a world where digital systems are inseparable from clinical operations.

Read the full white paper to explore how a resilience-based strategy supports secure, uninterrupted healthcare delivery.