Emerging Threats Against Urgent Care Centers

Urgent care centers have become an essential aspect of everyday life in our modern society. Securing this critical healthcare infrastructure is, naturally, of paramount importance. This report sheds light on some potentially insidious emerging threats of the next decade as they pertain to small and medium-sized businesses. In particular, Urgent Care Centers in Texas and the country. To this end, data has been collated using cyber security threat reports published by industry (Deloitte, CrowdStrike, Cisco, IBM, Verizon, Google, etc.) and government agencies (White House, NIST, Homeland Security, CISA, etc.) to put forth an educated guess on the nature and severity of cyberattacks that may plague this health-care sector of small and medium-sized businesses in the subsequent decade. In developing this report, the authors have considered nascent, upcoming technologies that are destined to become mainstream in the coming years. These include, but are not limited to Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative AI, and Large Language Models, Cloud, Internet of Things, and the ever-changing geopolitical landscape of the world. Several physicians are drawn to the (lucrative) field of starting an urgent care center and while the cyber climate is favorable, everything seems rosy. It’s only when a breach, or cyber-attack wreaks havoc do the urgent care proprietors begin to realize the dangers of an insecure cyber infrastructure. Unfortunately, in many instances, this realization may be too late. To illustrate the gravity of these threats, the report also includes a graphic that captures the evolution and diversity of these attacks and the devastating impacts of such an attack on a typical urgent care center. This is done to impress upon the proprietors that while defense may cost some resources, being unprepared may be prohibitively expensive. The authors also briefly discuss cyber inequity and the impact of cybersecurity trends on society and economies in general in this context. This section of our report is also devoted to a brief discussion on regulatory mechanisms, risk management, assessment, and disaster recovery protocols. Having identified this set of potential threats, the authors then outline tangible steps and measures that an urgent care SMB might proactively implement to insulate themselves against these threats. This report can serve as a prophylaxis against these upcoming threats. While not comprehensive, our intention is to help bolster health care centers against the most probable threat scenarios rather than all possible attacks. This is done with cost and time-efficiency in mind. Since most centers do not possess the means to devote substantial resources towards security, this report only includes options that can produce the most gain for their resources invested. 4 In summary, our report aims to inspire urgent care centers in Texas and around the country (that play a pivotal role in our modern society) to be mindful of the rapidly evolving landscape of cyber threats and attacks. This report brings to light our best forecast and predictions on the nature of cyber threats facing them in the next decade using reports from a diverse set of sources. Lastly, being proactive, this report will serve as a guide to be prepared and protected against some of these projected trends in threats and attacks for the next decade.