Overworked hospitals badly need to keep services running with COVID-19 cases surging — and that’s making them a prime target for cybercriminals. They now face a very troubling increase in attempts at extortion through ransomware denial-of-service attacks. To combat them, some are turning to network-monitoring software to quickly investigate disruptions and restore service. 

Among the most heavily targeted services are Voice over Internet Protocol technologies, or VoIP,  for telemedicine, according to Ken Czekaj (pictured), problem solver at NetScout Systems Inc. Remotely caring for patients requires voice and video connections that run over unified communications protocols often monitored for performance with network and services-assurance tools. 

“The same solution deployment for network and apps can be leveraged by cybersecurity folks as well,” Czekaj said. These tools offer a versatile, cost-effective solution for hospitals whose revenue has suffered through the pandemic, he added.

Czekaj spoke with Rebecca Knight, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, for a digital CUBE Conversation. They discussed how hospitals are using data-intensive monitoring tools to locate potential threats and keep critical services running. (* Disclosure below.)

Network data crunching gets to the choke point

IT workers in hospitals must detect threats to take down services, or restore them once interrupted, without lengthy processes. 

“When somebody says, ‘Oh my goodness, the [Electronic Medical Record] is down’ or ‘We’re having issues with our network,’ that’s a very tough chain to try to pinpoint. It’s almost a needle in a haystack,” Czekaj said. 

NetScout healthcare clients are using the company’s InfiniStreamNG appliance for visibility into issues. The workhorse of the solution is a data collector that processes packets from 1 to 100 gigabytes. It can actually take a traffic feed from every hop in the network. Its data engine then crunches the data and displays it in dashboards that “get to the point” quickly by showing the primary areas of abnormal behavior to pay attention to, Czekaj explained. The key word for why this works — and fast — is triage.

“If you hurt your finger, they’re not going to take an X-ray of your foot, because they’ve already triaged that that’s not your problem. We do the same thing, but we do it from the network and application side to see where the hotspots are,” he concluded. 

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations. (* Disclosure: NetScout Systems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither NetScout nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE