EFLM Task Force Preparation of Labs for Emergencies (TF-PLE) survey on cybersecurity

The Task Force Preparation of Labs for Emergencies (TF-PLE) of the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFLM) has conducted a specific survey to determine the current state-of-the art on cyber-attacks of laboratory medicine in Europe. The first three questions concerned respondents' familiarity with malware, cyber-attacks and cybercriminals' strategies, to which 68.3%, 68.3% and 53.2% replied that they were moderate/very familiar. The next two questions concerned the personal experience with cyber-attacks; 34.1% of respondents answered that they had already been the victim of one or more cyber-attacks at their institution, and 65.1% thought it was likely that they would be the victim of a cyber-attack in the future. The next two questions concerned the location of the hospital information system (HIS) and the laboratory information system (LIS); only 11.1% and 15.9% of respondents stated that the servers were physically located in the cloud, while the rest did not know their exact location (42.1% and 27.8%), or stated that the servers were physically located in the hospital (46.8% and 56.3%). A remote connection to access hospital domains was available to 60.3% of respondents, but 2-factor identification was only used (or is programmed to be available in the future) by 57.1% of facilities. Antivirus programs and firewalls were running on 84.1% and 82.5% of hospital computers, respectively. Nevertheless, only 69.8% of respondents reported receiving recommendations from their healthcare facility about security measures to prevent cyber-attacks. Regarding the existence of a recovery plan to defend the facility and laboratory against cyber-attacks, 22.2% of respondents stated that it was in place for the entire hospital and 18.3% only for the laboratory. To the last question about the willingness to receive EFLM suggestions/recommendations for prevention/management of cyber-attacks in the healthcare facility/laboratory, 81.7% responded positively.