Cáritas Coimbra takes part in the kick-off of ISAC Health European
In July 18th, Carina Dantas, Director of the Innovation Department at Cáritas Coimbra, represented one of the 12 guest organizations in the kick-off meeting of ISAC Health European, invited by the European Commission – DG CONNECT – Communication Networks, Content and Technology.
This invitation arose during Cáritas Coimbra participation on the Pharaon project, a large scale pilot funded in the scope of the H2020 program, in which the organisation is the project’s Ethics Chair of Committee, co-leader of the proliferation and the Portuguese pilot.
During the current pandemic, we witnessed an increase of cyber attacks aimed at people and organisations in the health department, such as a European center for COVID-19 tests that was struck in march 2020 by a ransomware, causing a computer shutdown on the second largest hospital in the country, that consequently lost its main knowledge on clinical trials in its database. This situation is a very actual concern of the essential services (OES) operators on the health department.
This reality increases the importance of EU coordinated action to improve cyber strength in the European health department. Specifically, it presents an opportunity for the OES to be a health department pioneer, establish and direct a trusted self-organized community for the coordination, collaboration and sharing of information related with cyber security matters, including incidents, threats and better practices amongst members.
This platforms are called ISAC (Information Sharing and Analysis Centre). In today’s scenario, a European health ISAC will have a special value, with the power to improve cyber security in the health department through post-crises action, in particular the exchange of good practices and mitigation policies.
ISAC are non-profit organisations that have already proven to be an invaluable resource for the exchange of cyber security information, including threats, incidents and better practices in different European departments, like Energy (EE-ISAC), Finances (FI-ISAC), Railways (ER-ISAC) and Marine (EM-ISAC).
A health European ISAC would supplement the current efforts and allow the establishment of a community for volunteer collaboration.
This kick-off meeting aimed to launch the first grounds for the development of this initiative.
