Assessment of the impact of cyber-attacks and security breaches in diagnostic systems on the healthcare sector

The healthcare sector has become a prime target for cyber-attacks, with major attacks and disruptions reported in 2024. Due to the time criticality of operations and potential business impacts, the attack information shared is very restrictive, and sometimes the event is not even reported. The natural reaction of the industry has been investment into state-of-the-art intrusion detection systems and artificial intelligence (AI) based solutions for early detection of attacks. However, in the absence of a guaranteed protection against such attacks and considering the widespread use of highly vulnerable legacy systems, preparation is key. This paper explores the potential effects of ransomware cyber-attack on the performance of the hospitals. The study applies mitigation measures from the literature in an agent-based simulation setup to assess the resilience of the hospital system. The aim of the simulation is to help hospitals to understand and quantify impact of attack, optimize resources, better plan for and respond to such disruptions.