Employees are at the front line of cyber attacks

Employees are at the front line of cyber attacks
By Sreeji Gopinathan

With the pandemic ushering in disruptive changes across the business landscape, a cure for virus has been in the limelight. As pharma firms worked on developing and producing drugs and vaccines to address COVID-19, their efforts also attracted the interest of global hackers.

There has been a significant uptick in the number of attacks on players involved in the fight against COVID-19 from hospitals, health departments, government agencies to vaccine makers and pharma companies.


Attackers have been attempting theft of intellectual property related to COVID-19, and provide a competitive advantage to their potential buyers for financial gains. Since India has emerged as a global leader in the world’s vaccine production efforts, Indian organizations have been in the cross hairs of the attackers hoping to extract medical research, clinical trials or vaccine production related data.

From priorities to vulnerabilitiesWhile confidentiality and availability are two important elements of cyber security, data integrity remains the most critical. Data Integrity is a fundamental for ensuring the quality and safety of drugs. It is also major global concern for health authorities and the pharma companies. With more employees working remotely, it is important for all pharma companies to ensure that their electronic records are trustworthy and reliable across the entire data lifecycle and even for long-term archival.

Cybersecurity strategies in the pharma industry were primarily driven by compliance requirements. Firms handle a huge amount of patient and healthcare data and as more information gets digitised, companies tend to become a target for cyber cr ..

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