Nothing is off limits these days. Cybercriminals target nearly every aspect of our lives. Of course, one sort of expects big banks, retailers and the government to have large red circles around their firewalls, routers and servers; as many attackers do claim to be “ anti-establishment.”

Recently however, we’ve learned of a new target. In a recent Wall Street Journal article “Nursing Homes Are Exposed to Hacker Attacks” we learn that even the aged and infirm can be casualties.

In the WSJ article writer Rachael King notes:

Health-care organizations increasingly are having trouble protecting data because medical equipment, such as dialysis and imaging machines, can be serviced through the Internet. That often is so the machines’ software can be administered or updated remotely.

Imagine the shock hospitals, nursing and urgent care facility administrators experience discovering their networked life saving machines are open to attack. The thought that their dialysis and CT scan devices could be infiltrated is more than a little disheartening.

On second thought, disheartening may not be the right word.  Terrifying is a better description.

I’ve been around IT security long enough to know that hacking doesn’t always start out to be ill intended. Young technologists often shake the Internet’s doors just to see what’s behind them. Imagine one opening the door to a dialysis machine without realizing the life and death implications of their visit.

Medical equipment doesn’t need to be open to cyber attack. Continuous compliance monitoring software can alert manufacturers to changed and rogue files. A simple automated software application monitoring the core operating system could be the difference between a machine owned by a healthcare facility or by a hacker.

Credit card theft is going to look like child’s play compared to a death by hacked medical equipment. And just who is ultimately responsible?