You Need a Cyber ​​Team – The Health Care Blog

BY KIM BELLARD

Maybe you are, like me, an Olympic fan (in my case: Summer Games, athletics). Most Americans are eagerly looking forward to the Super Bowl, while the rest of the world (and increasingly many in the US) is waiting for the Super Bowl World Championship. But too few of us know that next summer will be the opening ceremony International cyber security challenge, an esports event where teams from multiple countries compete against each other in cybersecurity skills. The USA send a 25-person team.

So what, could you say? Well, if you work in healthcare (or any other industry) or use a digital device, that should be taken care of. Ransomware attacks on health organizations continue to multiply. the Cyber ​​attack on the colonial pipeline last spring showed the weakness of other parts of our critical infrastructure, and we all almost certainly disclosed some of our personal information Data breaches.

We are in a war, but it is not clear if we have the right army with the right weapons to fight it. And so it happened that the US cyber games.

The US Cyber ​​Games were launched in April, a collaboration between growth hacking companies Katzcy and the National Cybersecurity Education Initiative (NICE) program that is part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Katzcy has already offered PlayCyber, an esports cyber game that aims to attract “the very best cybersecurity athletes,” while NIST’s mission is to “empower, nurture and coordinate a resilient community that works together to create an integrated ecosystem of cybersecurity education, training and to promote development ”. A marriage made in cyber heaven.

The US team was selected through three stages. The US Cyber ​​Open enabled cyber athletes to compete against each other in a two-week competition.capture the flag“-Competition. Sixty of the cyber athletes were invited to the US Cyber ​​Combine, an in-depth eight-week screening process. This resulted in the Cyber ​​Team Draft, from which the team that will represent us at the International Cyber ​​Security Challenge emerged.

“In today’s world where all the rules are changing, it’s difficult to practice countermeasures. This helps them see what attacks look like in real life, ”said Jessica Gulick, Founder and CEO of Katzcy told The Washington Post. Head coach TJ O’Connor, who leads the Florida State’s cybersecurity program, added:

Understanding the most likely attack is one thing you gain from cyber games. It is an attack based curriculum and then you can plan the most appropriate strategies when they arise … it is very important to show them how to attack and they will not become attackers but because you are not against you Defending an unknown boogeyman cannot explain it.

Sears Schultz, one of the team’s captains, believes: “Competitions are a great way to get people excited about cybersecurity. These actually have a direct correlation between skills and what you can do for a living. It’s a great way for companies to identify and recruit talent. “

So what is Her Are companies doing to identify and recruit this now mission-critical type of talent?

Health organizations have been hiring IT talent for decades, but are now struggling to attract people with digital expertise and much less cybersecurity skills. Mobile health apps explode, but – oops – many have critical vulnerabilities that make them vulnerable to cyberattacks. The FTC want to demand Health apps to report violations, even if companies aren’t necessarily subject to HIPAA, but reporting violations is nowhere near enough to stop them.

Mobile apps, IoT and cloud computing require a multitude of new skills and pose a multitude of new problems. Traditional IT talent won’t make it.

Not every organization will be able to recruit one of the members of the cyber team (and I’m sure the US cyber command and Big Tech will be at the forefront). Esports and hackathons are two other unconventional ways to find cyber athletes.

Esports, in case you didn’t know, is a Billion dollar industry, with tens of millions of viewers. Athletes can win millions of dollars e.g. League of Legends tournament that’s happening right now and attracting teams from all over the world. There is eSport locations; Universities spend eSport scholarships. It’s going mainstream.

The International Olympic Committee has taken a step towards including esports in the Olympic Games by introducing the Olympic virtual series just before the recent Tokyo Olympics, and it is widely expected that eSports will eventually be adopted as an Olympic sport. “The Olympics need eSports more than eSports need the Olympics,” said Rod Breslau, an eSports and gaming consultant, told CNET.

Feel free to replace “the Olympics” with “healthcare” or any other industry.

“Hacking” sometimes has a negative connotation, but the skills it requires and develops are exactly those needed by cyber athletes. A member of the cyber team approved for WaPo: “I love it. I really like to hack things … This is definitely something I want to do for a living. I want to do something on the offensive side”

Hackathons have been around a little longer than esports, although they weren’t commercialized in the same way. They are typically conducted over a short period of time, such as a weekend, and participants are encouraged to develop software solutions to problems. The appeal is that it forces people from different backgrounds / companies to resolve problems quickly, which often leads to unconventional solutions.

Hackathons are used for a variety of problems by a wide variety of industries, including healthcare. For example, in August a Data Science Hackathon about the tricky but boring problem of medical coding. The teams didn’t solve the problem, but the organizers believe the participants had ideas that could help them improve it.

MIT hacker medicine maintains a database of health-related hackathons and Chop health “Promotes inclusive innovation by connecting people to solve real health problems … by breaking down barriers and accelerating the pace of innovation.” It also maintains a list of past and upcoming hackathon events.

———

So maybe someone from your health organization should devote themselves to the International Cyber ​​Security Challenge next summer or at least check which schools / programs the athletes come from. Maybe it should sponsor an esports event or a team. Of course, it should host or participate in hackathons to address some of the many health IT issues and build relationships Major League hacking (“The official student hacking league”).

Or it could just wait for the next cyberattack.

Kim is a former e-marketing manager on a major blues plan, editor of the late & defendant Tincture.io, and now a regular THCB contributor.