Advancements in AI present health care professionals with both opportunities and challenges. AI can personalise health care through digitisation and advanced research efforts, but in the hands of threat actors it is a tool used for sophisticated cyberattacks.
A report by WHO India suggests that the healthcare sector in India is projected to face a significant workforce shortfall by 2030, the country is expected to be short of approximately 0.16 million doctors and 0.65 million nurses/midwives just to meet the WHO-recommended density of 34.5 skilled health workers per 10,000 population. AI can help alleviate this shortage by enhancing operational efficiency and streamlining routine tasks.
Health care systems are also under pressure to reduce staff burnout, reduce technology costs, stand out among competitors, and grow patient numbers and other revenue streams. At the same time, health care IT professionals fight off ongoing cyber disruption campaigns. According to the 2024 Global Threat Intelligence report, threat actors use GenAI to enhance social engineering and phishing attacks and share false information. Data breaches caused by ransomware, extortion, and other tactics result in significant financial losses to victims.
You can advance your health care IT system’s cybersecurity maturity and defend against cyberattacks by taking the following actions:
Build your AI strategy early
When integrating AI into your operations, it’s essential to start with a strategy that incorporates security and resilience from the beginning, as retrofitting these elements can introduce unnecessary challenges. By aligning your AI use cases with your organization’s specific needs—whether you’re a research hospital, a clinical facility, or both—you establish a solid foundation to achieve results. Once your use cases are defined, you can assess potential risks and address them by determining what data is required for your models, who need access to it, and how to secure it effectively.
Given the complexities of AI in health care, collaborating with external IT and security experts can provide crucial insights. These advisors can help you design a robust, future-ready AI strategy that avoids common pitfalls. Ensuring you have the right expertise in place will keep your AI initiatives secure, accelerate adoption and drive progress without unnecessary setbacks.
Advance your cybersecurity maturity
Reducing your attack surface is critical to limiting how threat actors can access sensitive medical data. As outlined in the Chambers Practice Guides: Cybersecurity 2025 India, adopting multi-factor authentication, regular vulnerability scans, and network segmentation can help healthcare organizations strengthen defenses and comply with India’s evolving data protection framework.
Real-time detection and response are essential for safeguarding health care IT systems. AI-powered tools like Managed Detection and Response (MDR) enable you to quickly identify and mitigate threats. Manage AI-specific risks by implementing AI guardrails, such as those offered through AI Proxy services, and regular penetration testing to ensure your systems remain secure and reliable.
Recovery planning should address more than cyberattacks: Prepare for system failures or AI disruptions, such as faulty outputs from Large Language Models (LLMs). The ability to swiftly roll back AI systems to prior versions is critical to maintaining operations. A solid strategy includes regular backups of data and systems, well-defined incident response plans, and immutable vaults.
Protect backups to avoid costly recoveries
According to Sophos’ State of Ransomware in India 2024 study, the average cost for Indian organizations to recover from a ransomware attack excluding any ransom payments was approximately $1.35 million. The report also highlights that 52% of Indian organizations relied on backups as their primary method to recover encrypted data, more than any other individual recovery approach.
It is crucial to protect your backups, given 94% of organizations impacted by ransomware in 2023 said threat actors attempted to compromise their backups during attacks. AI can strengthen your backup systems by automating backup scheduling, detecting anomalies like corrupted files or incomplete backups, and identifying and eliminating duplicate data.
Safeguard health care data and restore operations faster
According to Dell Technologies Innovation Index 2024 report, 95% of organizations prioritize purchasing technologies and applications with built-in security. In healthcare IT, this means proactively planning, preparing, and practicing as though an attack is inevitable—while focusing on restoring operations quickly and minimizing disruption. This is where AI-integrated solutions can help enable rapid recovery and reduce data loss:
- Immutable and isolated storage: Immutable backups cannot be altered or deleted. Storing backups in an isolated environment protects them from cyberattacks on your health care IT system.
- Data encryption: Encryption locks your data with a digital key, ensuring only authorized users can decode and access it.
- Data validation: Validation verifies the accuracy and integrity of data, guaranteeing your backups can be trusted and used when needed.
By advancing cybersecurity maturity with AI-enhanced backup and recovery methods, you can build a resilient and secure health care IT system that enables you to quickly recover from cyberattacks while minimizing downtime. This can set you apart in the market and instill confidence among patients, health care professionals, partners and investors. With the power of AI, health care professionals can continue delivering better patient care.