Drug counterfeiting in the pharmaceutical industry has been a problem for centuries. Experts have designed policies and technologies to fight against it over the years, though they are not foolproof. Virtual attacks threaten drug and customer data, making cybersecurity more crucial than ever in fighting counterfeiting efforts. These are the most prominent reasons why the two fields must intersect.
1. Protecting Supply Chain Data
Medicines travel a long way before reaching the patients who need them. Global suppliers are raising cybersecurity budgets, yet threats continue to outpace action. Their ingredients are compiled in laboratories, shipped to manufacturers to assemble into safe packaging and distributed to facilities. Every phase requires data to flow through software, cloud networks, and servers. The information is vulnerable at any point in the supply chain, and a robust cybersecurity plan would consider the large surface area.
Better cybersecurity also allows all stakeholders to trace and validate every drug’s authenticity and sourcing. Innovations like blockchain are cybersecurity staples because of their immutable verification abilities. Nobody can change transaction logs, which must be part of an anti-counterfeiting strategy.
2. Securing Manufacturing Processes
Manufacturers are going digital-first in their workflows and processes. The transition has led to extensive automation, including medication compliance verification and contract adjustments. The amount of sensitive information required for manufacturing is immense and highly valuable to cybercriminals.
Cybersecurity places safeguards around this information, preventing unauthorized access, malware or extrication. If hackers can navigate into manufacturing systems, it could cause downtime or threaten the recovery of patients needing medicines. The effect ripples throughout, impacting companies’ reputations until it delegitimizes them.
Defending manufacturing processes also saves people from exposure to harmful or ineffective ingredients. Medicines travel worldwide to reach the patients who need them most, with 30% of counterfeit medications sold in developing nations. The issue suggests a
3. Safeguarding Research and Development
Hackers have a lot to gain by interrupting and stealing intellectual property. Countless investments support these efforts, and threat actors can compromise them and use data for counterfeiting. The clinical data, hypotheses and participant information are enough for cybercriminals to make passable fake products.
Analysts are essential for keeping research confidential because it increases trust between pharmaceutical companies and citizens. People are less inclined to participate in studies if they fear their sensitive data is at stake.
4. Ensuring the Integrity of Online Pharmacies
Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, online pharmacies are growing. Deliveries make critical drugs more accessible to larger populations. However, cybersecurity is vital for preventing fake storefronts from appearing. Criminals can make false listings and drugs to send to people, which could be placebos or other harmful substances.
Experts can manually monitor suspicious activity from websites or automatically track channels, domains, payment platforms and more to identify threat attempts. They can follow marketplaces until they prove the information is misleading, removing fake medications and sales information from organizations’ sites and directories.
5. Achieving Compliance
The medical supply chain must abide by a handful of reporting agencies. Hackers could disrupt a medicine’s chances of saving lives by creating a noncompliant counterfeit version. They could also ransom or delete information, preventing legitimate drugs from hitting the market.
Most pharmaceutical supply chains leverage enterprise resource planning software and related resources to manage reporting and compliance, which has many vulnerabilities. Drug manufacturers must vet third-party collaborators well to ensure cybersecurity is a priority from every attack surface before delegating crucial data to programs.
6. Protecting Patient Data and Trust
Counterfeit drugs showing similar or identical brand names to authentic products dissolve patient relationships. Citizens begin associating a medicine with minimal or adverse effects because companies should have taken more measures to protect pharmaceutical data.
Hackers who create false drugs could change dosages, ingredients, instructions and warnings. Every jeopardized specification could endanger the individual’s health and the relationship built between the manufacturer and consumer.
Additionally, patient confidence is at stake. Medical subjects are highly personal to individuals, so a compromise of any size is a threat. Hospitals, offices and pharmacies need so much personally identifiable information that identity theft and other severe outcomes are likely to occur without robust cybersecurity.
Medicine’s Digital Defenses
Combating counterfeit drugs with cybersecurity is one of the best shots manufacturers, researchers and facilities have to protect their patients. With stakeholders placing so many assets and information in virtual spaces, medical professionals must collaborate with cybersecurity personnel to ensure pharmaceuticals stay safe and legitimate. Otherwise, the ramifications of counterfeit drugs are severe. Digital security protects public health, data integrity and the future of research simultaneously.
As the Features Editor at ReHack, Zac Amos writes about cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and other tech topics. He is a frequent contributor to Brilliance Security Magazine.
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