Figure 1.A Southern California hospital, the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, experienced a ransomware attack thatcrippled hospital services. (Image courtesy of CNN.)
It was an attack on a hospital like no other, reported the news in February 2016. The Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center had been hacked. Its services were crippled. As emergency patients were diverted to other area hospitals, hospital administrators received an ominous message. Pay a ransom to get your hospital systems back. The hospital ultimately paid $17,000 worth of bitcoins. The FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department have yet to find the culprit.
The hospital attack brings to light just how vulnerable buildings and institutions are to hackers. For hospitals, it can cause a disruption of medical services that could include blocked access to patient records, laboratory results, surgery and critical patient information updates. The potential cost in lives and loss of public trust is on par with what might occur with significant natural disasters.
IoT Smarts and Risk
Over the past few decades, there have been a number of seismic shifts in technology.Mainframe computing, client/server and cloud computing are some examples that easily come to mind. The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) has seen a technological shift that could potentially change the way our society operates.
The emergence of the IoT will affect urban planning and engineering as much as it will impact network…