Health IT

USA’s Mr. Robot gives a biting takedown of healthcare cybersecurity (video)

I would have killed to be a fly on the wall in the home of any healthcare CIO watching this show.

Now we know what Hollywood thinks of the cybersecurity of your average hospital.

The new USA hackers-start-a-revolution show, Mr. Robot, offered a brutal – albiet overstated – critique of health IT in its latest episode (how hipster tech is this show? The episode is titled, “Eps1.2d3bug.mkv”).

The main character – a supertalented, antisocial and jaded hacker – wakes up in the hospital after being pushed off a walking bridge. His therapist demands he submit to bimonthly drug tests if he wants her to sign off on his release. Then his narrative begins.

Hospitals. A heavily networked one like this is almost too easy to hack.

This is William Highsmith. He’s not only the head of the IT department here. He is the IT department. He’s also an idiot.

Not that I blame him because the people that hired him are also idiots.

The poor guy only gets a budget of about $7,000 a year. And he’s supposed to protect their network from people like me? He never stood a chance.

He uses useless virus scans, dated servers and security software that runs on Windows 98.

It’s one of the reasons I made this place my primary care facility. I can make my health records look like every other obedient zombie out there.

Boom.

This commentary rolls on, backed by images of our antihero cracking the security system and changing the results of his drug test.

I guess we’ll go back to paper now.

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