Tech Leadership Scrambles to Catch Up With Expanding Healthcare Risk Surface

Healthcare security teams have made measurable strides in securing a growing digital footprint, interpreting ambiguous regulations, and maintaining operational integrity, but a number of warning signs indicate that they not surprisingly lag behind in a sector defined by constant flux. 

According to the 2025 Horizon Report from Fortified Health Security, progress in some arenas is clear, indicating a broader awareness has emerged, recognizing that cybersecurity underpins both patient care and institutional stability. For example, Identity and Access Management is receiving long-overdue attention, with governance shifting from side conversations to a structured, board-level strategy. Incident response has matured into a shared enterprise concern. 

However, not all efforts carry equal weight at the same time. While improvements exist on paper, maintenance and asset visibility, two of the most fundamental requirements for sustainable security, still lag far behind. Many organizations simply began with an unstable foundation, which continues to limit their forward momentum.

Measured improvements in process, too, do not guarantee resilience–in part because bad actors advance more quickly. Even as healthcare organizations adopt NIST maturity models and rehearse disaster response, adversaries continue to scale in speed, creativity, and precision. Ransomware groups are operating like corporations. AI is accelerating phishing success rates. Third-party risk remains challenging to quantify and manage effectively.

Altogether, these shifts demand a mindset that views cybersecurity as integral to mission delivery. Protecting systems is no longer a technical challenge alone, but rather a leadership challenge, a strategic challenge, and above all, a clinical challenge. Cyber incidents in this environment are not abstract, instant possibilities: they impact real people in real time.

Integrated Risk Management (IRM) platforms now serve as the operating system for healthcare cybersecurity strategy. These platforms centralize risk data across IT, clinical operations, third-party ecosystems, and regulatory frameworks. They replace fragmented views with a unified lens, enabling executive leaders and cybersecurity teams to transition from a reactive posture to anticipatory action. As digital risk is aligned with clinical priorities (e.g., downtime tolerance, patient throughput, revenue cycle dependencies), IRM tools turn abstract vulnerabilities into board-level decisions.

Vulnerability Management solutions have matured into intelligence engines. The best platforms now assess not only the severity of a vulnerability, but also the clinical context in which it exists. For example, a software flaw in a surgical scheduling platform has very different implications than one on a disconnected test server. Contextualized threat scoring, paired with asset criticality mapping, ensures security teams focus on risks that would impact care delivery first.

Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) technologies are critical in a sector where supply chain exposure is often the weakest link. Modern platforms automate vendor assessments, track real-time security ratings, and incorporate threat intelligence to identify upstream risks before contracts are signed. Leading healthcare systems are now declining vendors based on poor cyber hygiene, not just cost or capability: a strategic pivot with long-term implications.

The report acknowledges a growing use of AI and its potential to sort through massive quantities of data to find connections and offer greater efficiencies. But the study cautions healthcare organizations to approach AI with prudence and notes its security shortcomings.  “In healthcare, cybersecurity risks can have serious impacts,” Fortified Security VP of Threat Services Preston Duren. “AI’s lack of real context can turn an automated response into a life-or-death situation.” 

The report urges healthcare organizations to view AI “as a powerful partner” that can “handle the heavy lifting” for routine tasks, pointing to a SOC in which analysts “use AI to accelerate research, validate hypotheses, and perform preliminary investigations,” but leaves final decisions, escalations, and incident responses “in human hands.” Such a collaborative model “significantly boosts both speed and effectiveness.,” with AI filtering “out false positives, allowing analysts to focus their expertise on real threats–eventually resulting in “continuous feedback from analysts helps finetune the automation, creating a smarter system without replacing human judgment or clinical insight.”

Regardless, organizations in this space must step up its cybersecurity game. Healthcare does not have the luxury of passive defense. The sector must move with the urgency of the threats it faces, which are measured not in alerts but in lives.

As Fortified Health Security COO William Crank says in the report, “In an industry where attackers are constantly innovating, standing still is the same as falling behind.”