The increased use of automated control systems to manage drug formulations and product quality (particularly for combination drugs) is creating new security risks for the pharmaceutical industry.
Examples of this new vulnerability surfaced in June 2017 when the pharmaceutical sector, along with healthcare and many other industries, were targeted by the Wannacry ransomware. Many organizations were forced to halt operations and drug production. When we look back at what’s already happened, it becomes clear that going forward risks will likely increase as more pharmaceutical operations adopt IoT technology.
According to Grandview research, the global IoT in healthcare market size is projected to reach USD 534.3 billion by 2025 expanding at a CAGR 19.9% over the forecast period. Many analysts also cite the pharmaceutical sector as one of the top five industries for adopting this technology.
While pharmaceutical operations networks were once siloed, today their connection to IT and anywhere access has created an environment that threatens the integrity of drug formulation control systems. What’s more, the elimination of “air-gapping” enables bad actors to penetrate a pharma-based OT environment from either the IT or the operational technology (OT) network.
Unlike other OT networks, pharma-based networks are not just mission-critical, they are life-critical. Because of this, it’s difficult to stop operations to perform routine maintenance or even apply patches when a vulnerability is discovered. Furthermore, in remote drug trial facilities, it is difficult to maintain an up-to-date inventory capable of zeroing in on specific devices to perform the servicing needed to keep operations running smoothly and securely. The result is that vulnerability windows can remain open indefinitely and be susceptible to both known and unknown thre ..
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