Hospital cyber attacks cost $600K/hour. Here’s how AI is changing the math

In years past, medical facilities weren’t as vulnerable as they are now; hackers had an unwritten rule not to target institutions or services where a disruption could put people in physical danger.

But that’s no longer the case: Ransomware-as-a-service has proliferated and stolen medical information has become highly monetizable, spurring threat actors to attack hospitals at unprecedented levels. 

Alberta Health Services (AHS) doesn’t intend to leave itself vulnerable — the medical system is bolstering its defenses with AI. 

Deploying AI-reinforced cyber ops from cybersecurity platform Securonix, AHS has cut its average time to respond to high-priority incidents by more than 30%. It has also reduced false positive alerts by 90% and workloads by 2 to 3 hours per day, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings. 

“Many hospital networks are big fat, easy targets,” Richard Henderson, AHS executive director and CISO, told VentureBeat. “I ...