A billion medical images are exposed online
An odd line from the article, wherein it states that security researchers don’t blame vendors, but the physicians and hospitals that fail to properly secure the software.<p>I have never, in all my years of working in healthcare, seen a hospital or physicians office directly install and manage PACS. They pay a third-party - usually the vendor - to install, configure, and walk them through it. Maybe a behemoth system like Northwell has the IT bench to do it themselves, but that would be the exception.<p>So allow me to rephrase slightly: “technologically inept organization pays vendor to make machine go vroom. Vendor leaves keys in ignition. Damn that technologically inept organization.”<p>To take a 10,000-foot view of the situation, though:<p>Healthcare-related technologically was largely pushed on the industry via legislation. Said legislation was almost entirely stick, no carrot. The result was healthcare organizations with a gun to their head to buy from a handful of vendors, with no real ROI to be seen from it - aka, the government outsourcing its costs to private industry, and throwing pork to some major health IT firms along the way. When a technology is forced on you at a loss, from a vendor with little incentive to optimize ease of use or utility, you get a terrible piece of shit that no one wants to invest more time and money into than absolutely needed. That’s going to show itself in a myriad of ways.