While introducing cutting-edge advances in medicine, pharmaceutical companies have also become high-value targets for cybercriminals. Sensitive information about patients, patented and non-patented drugs, clinical trials, research projects and technological advances are worth millions of dollars on the black market. It’s worth noting that the average cost of a security breach at a pharmaceutical company is $5 million.

To provide your pharma clients with the best possible security solutions, it pays to understand their specific security challenges.

Increasingly sophisticated cyber threats
Cybercriminals are growing increasingly sophisticated in how they use threats to target pharmaceutical companies. Accenture’s Cyber Threat Intelligence Report 2021 reveals that both targets and tactics are changing, and noted the following:

“Ransomware actors are expanding data leak extortion, devising new methods to pressure victims. Their creative approaches are hitting home as they place operational resilience—already tested by the disruptive forces of the pandemic—under increased pressure.”

As KPMG suggests, cybercriminals’ tactics are changing.

“Unlike auto-spreading ransomware such as WannaCry and NotPetya, many new strains open the door for criminals to steal data and manipulate systems, as attackers exhibit deeper knowledge and understanding of their target’s environment.”

Fortinet’s internal research also found that there was a tenfold increase in ransomware in the first six months of 2021 and that Q1 saw a botnet spike, with the percentage of organizations detecting botnet activity jumping from 35 percent to 51 percent.

Partner and supplier challenges
The pharmaceutical industry is also comprised of several sub-industries, all with different business models, technology requirements and growing attack vectors.
      
Many companies rely on third-party vendors for their research and development activities. For example, clinical research firms are hired to advise them on what medical areas to invest in. Other companies are used to handle logistics including receiving, storing and fulfilling medication orders. These companies can have different technologies and approaches to data security which can lead to potential weak points, especially as the attack surface continually expands with new partners in new territories.

Complex, disparate technologies
Many pharma companies have a bolted-on mix of digital and legacy operational and infrastructure technologies. This can lead to operational data silos as well as an expanded attack surface that includes remote working points and partner and supplier ecosystems that may have their own security challenges.

Enhance Your Pharma Customers’ Cybersecurity with Fortinet
Fortinet cybersecurity solutions enable pharmaceutical organizations to address their key security concerns, including their expanding attack surface, insider threats, network complexity and more.
The Fortinet Security Fabric provides centralized visibility of a pharma company’s entire IT environment. The high-performance platform offers a rich, open ecosystem that protects an organization’s digital attack surface and enables self-healing to protect applications, data and devices. Its network access control (NAC) solution also protects against unauthorized access and insider threats.