Most pharmaceutical companies agree that the losses from cyber attacks could be escalating alarmingly in the coming days. According to the latest research report of The Economic Times group, only 5-10% pharmaceutical organizations have deployed cybersecurity solutions to combat hacks and breaches. Lack of proper data security measures are luring cyber crooks to target this lucrative industry.
The pharmaceutical industry is lagging behind other industries when it comes to deployment of IT security solutions majorly due to lack of management concern. Most of the organizations in this industry are concerned about the challenges arising from new/ latest drug approval process, clinical trials, among many other market access challenges. In addition, the supply chain in pharma industry requires lots of manpower and supervision which prompts the management to emphasize more on smooth business and supply chain management issues. Unfortunately, pharma organizations, due to so many standard security concerns, seldom give importance to the security of all confidential data accumulated every day, which in turn creates a security gap.
Recently, a spate of massive data breach incidents in the last one year have forced most of the organizations to think about it and act on the security of the Intellectual Property (IP), which are the most sought after IT assets. Some of the examples include:
- Molecular formula of the major drugs prepared by R&D Department
- Research data on any upcoming drugs for any specific ailment
- Confidential management data
- Business contracts/ agreements
- Details of clinical experiments
Analysis
Like any other industry, the pharma industry too generates and stores a huge amount of data related to clinical experiments, molecular formula of major drugs, research of new drugs for specific ailments and confidential business contracts every day, which are stored on the servers. These servers are accessed by hundreds of users at different points of time for different purposes. If there is no mechanism to control and monitor the users who are accessing these data storage machines for various reasons then there are high risks that the data might be misused without the knowledge of the IT administrator. Since this industry consists of highly sensitive and lucrative information as mentioned above, it is quite obvious that these data, and privileged accounts would be vulnerable to breaches.
A robust ARCON | Privileged Access Management (PAM) is the ideal solution, which can help administrators to keep track of each and every activity happening around confidential and highly sensitive data. The IT system in pharma industry consists of a control room, data center and hundreds of devices giving commands to the production units. A single abuse of privileged identity in the network of end users can wreak havoc on the entire production process, theft of IP and might consequently result in huge financial losses and other compliance related issues. This can happen if unauthorized users access to critical IT systems with malicious intentions sans access control policy framework or role and rule based privileged entitlements.
ARCON | PAM solution ensures the sanctity of confidential data by offering the IT risk management team a thick layer of security shield, wherein each access to every critical information is authorized, validated and documented.
The Bottom- line
In this huge world of dark web, every sensitive and confidential data is in great demand. Pharma industry is comprised of some of the most lucrative information. There is always an imminent data breach risk for pharma companies. ARCON | Privileged Access Management solution can mitigate these humungous challenges.
ARCON is a leading enterprise risk control solutions provider, specializing in risk-predictive technologies. ARCON | User Behaviour Analytics enables to monitor end-user activities in real time. ARCON | Privileged Access Management reinforces access control and mitigates data breach threats. ARCON | Secure Compliance Management is a vulnerability assessment tool.