Pharmaceutical Cybersecurity
Enabling Pharma Companies to Innovate While Protecting Mission-Critical Assets
Read the ReportOverview
The pharmaceutical industry is made up of several sub-industries, all with different business models, technology requirements, and growing attack vectors. But they all have in common that cyber-criminals are increasingly targeting them in attempts to get extremely valuable information such as secret formulas, patient and customer information, and scientific research.
OT/Manufacturing
The convergence of operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) has a significant impact on manufacturing cybersecurity. Specifically, industrial control systems (ICS) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems that have historically been air gapped are now being connected to IT systems—and therefore to the internet. As the air gap is removed, these systems are exposed to an increasingly advanced threat landscape and are targets for hackers involved in terrorism, cyber warfare, and espionage.
The Fortinet Security Fabric provides a single-vendor, end-to-end, integrated cybersecurity architecture across IT and OT, from protection to detection to response. This enables operational and cost efficiencies and improves protection against fast-moving threats. In addition to Fortinet tools, the Security Fabric enables integration with specialized OT solutions through the largest ecosystem of Fortinet Fabric Partners to streamline data into a single view for informed decision-making.
FortiGuard Labs provides robust, OT-specific threat intelligence to those who manage manufacturing systems. FortiGuard Labs also has nearly eight years of experience in using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify unknown threats.
Related Resources
Solution Guides
IDC and Fortinet Securing Medical Devices InfoBrief - The Next Threat Vector Powering Advanced Research with Scalable, High-Performance Security in Hyperscale Data Centers Fortinet Security Fabric Integrates OT Security to Unlock Automation and Minimize Complexity Securing Industrial Control Systems (ICS) with Fortinet
Case Studies
Connected Medicine
Healthcare providers are putting more systems online, which often translates to connecting internal systems. In addition to protecting data, this has relevant security implications for the drug and device manufacturers as they must safeguard intelligent devices that in some instances are capable of dispensing medicine. With network resources being exposed to threats by potentially unsecure access, ensuring effective cybersecurity on the local-area network (LAN), wide-area network (WAN), and cloud edges—where data is generated and consumed—is challenging.
Fortinet offers pharma companies the most secure access layer solution in the industry by converging security and network access. The access layer, WAN, and security are managed and enforced through a single pane of glass on the FortiGate next-generation firewall (NGFW).
Related Resources
Solution Guides
IDC and Fortinet Securing Medical Devices InfoBrief - The Next Threat Vector Powering Advanced Research with Scalable, High-Performance Security in Hyperscale Data Centers Fortinet Security Fabric Integrates OT Security to Unlock Automation and Minimize Complexity Securing Industrial Control Systems (ICS) with Fortinet
Case Studies
Cloud Migration
With cloud deployments and SaaS becoming standard in the industry, pharma companies must work to understand cloud security solutions and ensure they have adopted efficient and effective controls for their situations.
FortiGate next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) and cloud security solutions offer best-of-breed secure connectivity, network segmentation, and application security for hybrid-cloud-based deployments. They provide centralized, consistent security policy enforcement and connect through a high-speed VPN tunnel. FortiGate-VMs deployed in the public cloud can securely communicate and share consistent policies with FortiGate NGFWs of any form factor provisioned in a private data center.
Related Resources
Solution Guides
IDC and Fortinet Securing Medical Devices InfoBrief - The Next Threat Vector Powering Advanced Research with Scalable, High-Performance Security in Hyperscale Data Centers Fortinet Security Fabric Integrates OT Security to Unlock Automation and Minimize Complexity Securing Industrial Control Systems (ICS) with Fortinet
Case Studies
Distributed Networks
With mergers and acquisitions, pharma companies end up with different locations using different technologies. This increases the attack surface and impacts everything from visibility to operational efficiency.
To address this fragmentation, pharmaceutical enterprises need to assimilate new branch locations into an integrated cybersecurity architecture. Connections with these locations must perform with minimal latency, and care should be taken that adversaries cannot penetrate a less secure branch location and then move laterally within the organization.
Fortinet SD-Branch technology enables quick integration of newly acquired branch locations by providing integrated networking and security within the branch and with headquarters. Software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) technology enables network traffic to move over the public internet. At the branch, wireless access points and networking hardware integrate into the larger security architecture.
Fortinet networking and secure branch solutions enable fast-growing pharma networks to scale their operations securely and with high performance.
Related Resources
Solution Guides
IDC and Fortinet Securing Medical Devices InfoBrief - The Next Threat Vector Powering Advanced Research with Scalable, High-Performance Security in Hyperscale Data Centers Fortinet Security Fabric Integrates OT Security to Unlock Automation and Minimize Complexity Securing Industrial Control Systems (ICS) with Fortinet
Case Studies
Compliance
Pharmaceutical manufacturers are subject to a wide variety of ever-changing regulations and standards. Demonstrating compliance can be prohibitively time-consuming, especially when networks are comprised of disparate point products that don’t share reporting capabilities. FortiAnalyzer helps automate compliance tracking and reporting of industry regulations and security standards for greater workflow efficiency across the network. Plus, it includes hundreds of pre-built reports and templates that are regulation-specific to make proving compliance easy. FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer natively provide the capability to evaluate the network environment against best practices, thus measuring compliance risks.
Related Resources
Solution Guides
IDC and Fortinet Securing Medical Devices InfoBrief - The Next Threat Vector Powering Advanced Research with Scalable, High-Performance Security in Hyperscale Data Centers Fortinet Security Fabric Integrates OT Security to Unlock Automation and Minimize Complexity Securing Industrial Control Systems (ICS) with Fortinet
Case Studies
Key Pharma Industry Cybersecurity Threats and Challenges
Network Complexity
Appliance sprawl is common in pharma networks as disparate security solutions have been “bolted on” over the years to address a particular need. This creates very complex security systems that cause a number of issues such as:
- Lack of visibility that makes it nearly impossible to detect and understand security events
- No automation of threat response so companies cannot quickly detect and stop attacks
- Complicated compliance demonstration that is prohibitively resource-intensive
- Wasted IT resources on separately managing all the different security controls
Expanding Attack Surface
Pharma companies have quite a large number of attack vectors thanks to ongoing digitization and digital innovation efforts, IoT and IIoT device integration into the network via OT/IT convergence, and the fact that they are often distributed around the globe. Add to that the recent need to embrace telework, and cyber criminals have many attack targets to choose from:
Telework
Remote users create additional security requirements and different security challenges than on-site workers. For industries such as pharma, which have typically not had many employees working from home, implementing secure IT infrastructure for a remote workforce is a daunting but necessary task due to COVID-19.
Endpoint proliferation
More and more endpoint devices—both personal and corporate—connecting to the network causes more and more problems. These devices are often vulnerable and possibly infected. In addition, IT staff may not even have a way to know what is connected to the network, making it impossible to effectively secure it.
Cybersecurity Skills Gap
As with every industry, skilled security professionals are hard to find and retain in pharma too. It’s estimated that there is a shortage of more than four million cybersecurity professionals today. This makes it challenging and expensive to fill needed positions.
Insider Threats
Insider threats pose a big risk to pharma companies and they can be hard to detect. These threats cover a wide range of motives and behaviors, and often companies simply don’t know what to look for. Whether a disgruntled employee is trying to make money, or a careless one accidentally gives away passwords or secrets, the ramifications are often devastating.
Learn More Healthcare providers are putting more systems online, which often translates to connecting internal systems.
Learn More With mergers and acquisitions, pharma companies end up with different locations using different technologies. This increases the attack surface and impacts everything from visibility to operational efficiency.
Learn More Pharmaceutical manufacturers are subject to a wide variety of ever-changing regulations and standards.
Learn More With cloud deployments and SaaS becoming standard in the industry, pharma companies must work to understand cloud security solutions and ensure they have adopted efficient and effective controls for their situations.
Learn More
Fortinet Differentiators for Pharma Cybersecurity
Integration
Fortinet delivers a flexible platform for building an end-to-end, integrated security architecture. This integration can span from a pharma company’s manufacturing facility to its headquarters, to its branch offices. It delivers protection across the network from the data center to endpoints to multiple clouds. To maximize existing investments, an open application programming interface (API) and Fabric Connectors can be used to integrate third-party security tools.
Visibility
The Fortinet Security Fabric allows centralized visibility and control over geographically dispersed branch and cloud solutions and disparate security elements, including those of third-party solution providers through out-of-the-box application programming interfaces (APIs) and an open-API architecture.
Automation
The automation provided by Fortinet solutions is crucial to rapid threat detection and response, consistent and centralized policy enforcement, and efficient generation of compliance reports. This allows limited security staff to demonstrate compliance with pharma industry regulations while protecting the business against threats in real time.
Insider Threat Protection
Fortinet delivers a comprehensive solution to guard against insider threats with robust identity and access management supported by network access control (NAC), intent-based segmentation, deception technology, and user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA).
Industry Leadership
Fortinet has achieved nine “Recommended” ratings from NSS Labs and achieved the best score in its NGFW Security Value Map. The company is recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network Firewalls and WAN Edge Infrastructure.
Reports
The 2021 State of Pharmaceuticals and Cybersecurity Report Independent Validation of Fortinet Solutions - NSS Labs Real-World Group Tests Securing Critical Operational Technology in Manufacturing 2020 State of Operational Technology and Cybersecurity Report Independent Study Finds That Security Risks Are Slowing IT-OT Convergence
White Papers
Managing Cyberthreats in the Pharmaceutical Industry Top 5 Cybersecurity Threats and Challenges to Pharmaceutical Businesses for 2022 Fortinet Cybersecurity Solutions for Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Securing the Pharmaceutical Industry With Secure SD-WAN Addressing Pharma’s Top Cybersecurity Challenges Top 7 Cybersecurity Threats and Challenges Today’s Pharmaceutical Companies Must Address Fortinet Manufacturing Cybersecurity Solutions
Solution Guides
How Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Can Achieve Full Transparency and Centralized Control in OT Environments With Fortinet Keeping Life Sciences Safe with Fortinet and SecurityBridge for SAP Integrated, Broad Protection for Pharmaceutical Industrial Control Systems Secure SD-WAN for the Pharmaceutical Industry IDC and Fortinet Securing Medical Devices InfoBrief - The Next Threat Vector Powering Advanced Research with Scalable, High-Performance Security in Hyperscale Data Centers Fortinet Security Fabric Integrates OT Security to Unlock Automation and Minimize Complexity
eBooks
Delivering end-to-end security across Pharma Protecting Plant and Manufacturing Operations from the Expanding Attack Surface A Security Approach for Protecting Converged IT and OT in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Fortinet Solutions for Automation-driven Network Operations How to Simplify Network Operations Complexity OT Network Security Starts With Visibility Shortcomings of Traditional Security and Digital OT
Videos
Medical Device Security Embedded: Fireside Chat Top 7 Cybersecurity Challenges Facing Today's Pharma Companies Securing Critical Operational Technology in Manufacturing Independent Study Finds That Security Risks Are Slowing IT-OT Convergence State Operational Technology and Cybersecurity Report 2020
