Given increasing concerns over privacy and hacking vulnerabilities, a plethora of healthcare security discussion is predicted for this year’s RSA Conference.

In a blog post, RSA Security’s Britta Glade lists her top 10 observations on the mountain of speaking submissions she reviewed for the 2015 event.

“In terms of vertical-specific submissions, healthcare definitely wins the prize—even beating out financial services,” Glade says.

Image by Perspecsys https://www.flickr.com/photos/111692634@N04/ used under CC license.

Not a surprising occurrence given security experts’ warnings that 2015 could be the “Year of the Healthcare Hack.” Cyber criminals know the high value of medical data and certainly have their eyes on the healthcare industry. Already this year, we’ve seen health insurance providers Anthem, LifeWise and Premera Blue Cross fall victim.

“We all look on healthcare with great interest, and submitters saw opportunities to explore privacy related concerns, identity issues, legislative rumblings and hacking opportunities that are truly life and death,” says Glade.

The reality that medical devices are vulnerable to cyber attack is another terrible ballgame the healthcare industry faces. Late last year, for example, security expert and diabetic Jay Radcliffe hacked into his own insulin pump. And for anyone who watches the tv series Homeland, they can’t forget when terrorists hacked the pacemaker of the Vice President of the United States, and U.S. security experts have warned that this isn’t just something that happens on TV. In fact, as of last year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was investigating more than 20 medical devices that could be tampered with by third parties like terrorists or hackers.

From a thought leadership standpoint, these types of incidents provide security vendors the opportunity to weigh in as an expert, as appropriate, with media and via social channels. This engagement feeds their vertical market strategy – as healthcare ranks high on many infosec companies’ list of priority vertical markets. We at the tech PR firm PAN guide the process, leveraging our real-time newsroom and working with our tech and security clients to execute effective breaking news response campaigns.

RSA Conference organizers have tapped quite a few industry sources to tackle healthcare security topics as well. A sampling of healthcare sessions planned for the 2015 event includes:

• Healthcare and APTs: 3 Steps to Prevent & Detect the Worst Threat Yet
• Emergent Privacy Models in Healthcare
• Lock Your Front Door: Protecting Patient Portals

For a full list of tracks and sessions, the digital catalogue brochure is available now from the Conference website.

And RSA Conference isn’t the only forum next month for healthcare security knowledge sharing and learning. Healthcare’s own marquee event,HIMSS, will debut its Cybersecurity Threat Center at the 2015 conference, which takes place April 12-16 in Chicago (one week prior to RSA).

With troops on the ground at both HIMSS and RSA, the PAN team will be tuning in to the healthcare security discussions at both events. How about you?