DDoS Protection , Governance & Risk Management , Next-Generation Technologies & Secure Development

Healthcare vs. the IoT Botnet

Akamai's Dave Lewis on How to Defend Against the Power and Scale of Unsecured Devices
Healthcare vs. the IoT Botnet

With their reliance on so many IoT devices, how can healthcare organizations defend against menaces such as the Mirai malware, which exploit these devices to create powerful botnets and launch DDoS attacks? Akamai's Dave Lewis offers tips.

Lewis, a Global Security Advocate at Akamai, says today's attackers are indiscriminate - they are targeting organizations across all sectors - but healthcare entities have more at stake because their services are so central to people's lives. And in many instances, he says, this is not a battle that healthcare organizations can fight alone.

"You have to have really good network management from a defender point of view, and you have to have the proper defenses in place to deal with [attacks] when they come from the external," Lewis says. "With the external piece, a lot of times you have to rely on third-party providers who can help you better protect your organization, simply because most organizations don't have either the bandwidth or the bench strength in order to counter these sort of threats."

In an interview about how healthcare entities can defend against IoT botnets and DDoS attacks, Lewis discusses:

  • The scale of the attack surface for healthcare organizations;
  • How to fight back against manufacturers who program default passwords into IoT devices;
  • The role of cloud security solutions in a layered defense.

Lewis has two decades of industry experience. He has extensive experience in IT operations and management. Currently, Lewis is a Global Security Advocate for Akamai Technologies. He is the Founder of the security site Liquidmatrix Security Digest and Co-Host of the Liquidmatrix podcast. Lewis writes a column for CSO Online and Forbes.

To learn more about the rising trend of IoT botnet attacks, read Akamai's Q3 2016 State of the Internet Security Report Executive Summary.




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