A Cyber Security Risk Assessment of Hospital Infrastructure including TLS/SSL and other Threats

Cyber threats traditionally target governments, financial institutions and businesses. However, of growing concern is the threat to healthcare organizations. This study conducts a cyber security risk assessment of a theoretical hospital environment, to include TLS/SSL, which is an encryption protocol for network communications, plus other physical, logical and human threats. Despite significant budgets in the UK for the NHS, the spend on cyber security appears worryingly low and many hospitals are wide open to attack. This paper concludes that major change, led nationally by the UK government, is needed to make cyber security a major priority in the NHS, without diluting long-standing values of service provision to patients.