Enhancing Cybersecurity in the Philippines Healthcare Sector: A Zero Trust Survey

The healthcare sector in the Philippines is slowly digitizing, with electronic health records and a proliferation of connected medical devices — giving rise to new cybersecurity challenges that traditional perimeter-based models are ill-prepared for. In this paper we investigate a novel security framework referred to as Zero Trust (ZT), in contrast with traditional models ZT treats all network traffic non-trusted, which necessitate unceasing confirmation of users, devices and resources. The paper also demonstrates how the research respond to cyberattacks like the ransomware incident with PhilHealth and suggested that Zero Trust has potential in improving healthcare security. However, Zero Trust has not been widely adopted in the Philippine healthcare sector largely because of its newness and also shortage of locally customized studies. The paper concludes with recommendations for increased studies and implementation of Zero Trust in the Philippines to improve data protection and cybersecurity in healthcare.