What happens when hospitals are locked out of critical systems, patient data is held hostage, and life-saving treatments are delayed? Put simply, people suffer, and lives are put at risk.
This is not a hypothetical scenario – it is already happening.
In early 2024, a ransomware attack on Change Healthcare – the largest healthcare payment system in the U.S. – triggered a nationwide healthcare crisis. With 14 billion transactions processed annually, the system came to a grinding halt. Hospitals lost access to medical records, pharmacies couldn’t process prescriptions, and patient care was disrupted for nearly a month. The financial toll reached $2.9 billion, but the real cost was far greater: patients left untreated, surgeries postponed, and doctors unable to deliver critical care.
This incident is just one example of the growing threat of cyberattacks in the healthcare sector.
A recent report by the National Test Institute for Cybersecurity NTC has revealed that Swiss hospitals are also alarmingly vulnerable to cyberattacks. Featured in NZZ’s exposé titled “Patient data not securely stored: Expert report reveals major flaws in hospital IT systems”, the study found 40 moderate-to-severe vulnerabilities across Switzerland’s three most widely used hospital IT systems – flaws so obvious they should have been caught during routine checks. Key issues included outdated architecture, faulty encryption, and third-party system weaknesses, making it easy for attackers to access or alter patient data.
Healthcare has become one of the most targeted industries in the world. According to the HIPPA journal, in 2024 alone:
Most alarmingly, five of the ten biggest cyberattacks in 2024 targeted healthcare organizations.
Switzerland is no exception. In 2022, a ransomware attack in Neuchâtel medical practices exposed 20,000 patient records on the dark web. In December 2023, a cyberattack on Vidymed left 100 doctors unable to access patient data. Other major Swiss healthcare institutions, including Pallas Clinics and Wetzikon Hospital have also suffered cyberattacks, leading to system shutdowns and severe medical service delays.
This isn’t just an IT problem – it’s a systemic failure. Swiss hospitals rely on software vendors to secure their systems, but as cyber threats evolve, these vendors are falling behind – leaving the healthcare sector an easy target for cybercriminals. Without immediate action, a major attack isn’t just possible – it’s imminent.
Modern healthcare systems rely on interconnected networks to enable seamless communication between providers, insurers, and patients – but this very connectivity is also the greatest vulnerability.
In the case of Change Healthcare, attackers exploited a vulnerability in a web service, gaining access to a system that processes billions of sensitive transactions. In Switzerland, many hospitals lack the resources or expertise to secure their systems, relying on software manufacturers who may overlook robust security measures or fall victim to zero-day vulnerabilities.
The Change Healthcare attack and the NTC report on Swiss hospitals serve as stark reminders that the traditional Internet is no longer a viable technology for critical infrastructure.
A cyberattack is more than just a service disruption, stolen data, or financial loss – it’s a fundamental betrayal of trust that puts this vital sector in danger and disrupts the correct functioning of society. The biggest risks of cyberattacks against the healthcare sector are:
The healthcare sector not only has to always safeguard its infrastructure from bad actors but is also responsible for complying with strict data protection laws. Unfortunately, the current Internet offers no control over where patient data travels when going from one network to the other. It can be intercepted, altered, or stolen, exposing hospitals to legal action and massive fines.
We need a fundamental shift in how we secure healthcare networks.
It is clear: relying on firewalls, patches, and outdated security measures isn’t working. We need a paradigm shift. SCION, an inter-domain Internet protocol, is that shift.
Why is this not just a bold statement: As the Internet grows faster than ever with IoT, cheaper and easier-to-attack devices are connected. As a result, these devices are used to attack legitimate devices, turning the Internet into an increasingly toxic network. Therefore, it becomes business-critical to manage the attack surface of an institution like a hospital or other healthcare organization.
The classic Internet is unfortunately not designed to manage the attack surface. The superpower of today's Internet is its capability to connect every dot with every dot at all times. The Internet does not allow you to limit the reach of a service. SCION, researched and developed over the last 15 years and successfully tested in use with critical infrastructure, allows managing the attack surface, controlling where your data is traveling, and offers security properties we so far only knew from closed, super-secure networks.
Unlike the traditional Internet, where hospitals’ networks and systems are exposed to the world (including bad actors), SCION allows organizations to decide who can access their systems via Anapaya GATE.
Healthcare providers can move their infrastructures to the SCION network and fundamentally increase their security posture, cyber resilience and data sovereignty:
✔ 99% reduction in attack surface – If attackers can’t see your systems, they can’t attack them. Thus, you can effectively prevent intrusion and DDoS attacks on the SCION Internet.
✔ Business continuity guaranteed – SCION’s multipath feature allows to switch path in sub-seconds in the event of path failure or congestion, so disruptions are kept to a bare minimum – reducing the risk of downtime.
✔ Geofencing & compliance – Full control over where patient data travels, ensuring compliance with data protection laws.
This is not just a technical upgrade – for healthcare leaders, this is a moral imperative.
For healthcare providers, SCION offers a way to secure critical systems without compromising accessibility. Here are two key use cases:
SCION can protect healthcare systems that need to be accessed by a multitude of stakeholders. A prime example is the Secure Swiss Healthcare Network (operational since 2023) where 50,000 healthcare professionals access digital healthcare services on the SCION Internet via the GATE.
With the rise of home office, SCION can strengthen the remote environment by putting critical services such as VPNs on the SCION Internet. This is then accessed only by select ISPs and their users via the GATE, making it far harder for attackers to exploit network vulnerabilities to infiltrate the organization.
This approach has already been validated in real-world scenarios. For example, a Swiss financial institution that moved its VPN infrastructure on the SCION Internet saw a dramatic reduction in attacks. During a three-month period, they experienced 8 million scans on their traditional VPN infrastructure but only 18,000 on SCION – with zero malicious attacks.
In both scenarios, even if an attack occurs, healthcare operators have the ability to quickly identify and block malicious actors minimizing the damage. Not only that, but you can also purse the legal route against the perpetrators.
The Change Healthcare attack and the NTC’s report are not warnings – they are demonstrations that our current cybersecurity strategies are failing. The goal now is not merely to respond to threats, but to stay ahead of them. For healthcare operators, the choice is clear: continue relying on vulnerable Internet infrastructure and risk becoming the next victim – or take control with SCION to secure your networks, protect patient lives, and ensure uninterrupted care.
With SCION, healthcare security leaders can safeguard critical systems, reduce risk, and empower healthcare providers to focus on what they do best: saving lives.
The time to act is now. Book a demo today and take the first step toward securing your hospital before it’s too late.