Healthcare Buyers Care About How Fast Your Systems Come Back
A recent ransomware story caught my attention.
The University of Health Sciences & Pharmacy was hit by LockBit. Internal systems were compromised, the ransom demand exceeded seven figures, and the organization had to work around unavailable systems while threat actors claimed they had stolen patient data. It was reported that UHSP was able to recover critical systems without paying the ransom because it had a well architected disaster recovery strategy. Layered backups were present and accessible when the primary environment went offline.
Health Tech companies should pay attention to this story.
The Backup Question...
Healthcare buyers may ask whether you have a disaster recovery plan.
That question is the beginning of something deeper.
What they're trying to determine is how quickly you can recover systems.
So the following questions are likely to follow...
Where are backups stored?
Who can access them during an incident?
Are backups isolated from your production environment?
How often are your backup tests performed?
What is your RTO?
Those questions are critical because enterprise healthcare buyers are evaluating how failure will affect their ecosystem.
When Downtime Halts Patient Care
In the UHSP incident, the outage affected Active Directory, on-premises services, physical security (e.g., building automation, cameras, badges, etc.), and the ability to administer user accounts. Some cloud-based systems continued working, but the on-premise impact was significant.
When a system fails, the impact does not only affect technology in healthcare.
Access breaks.
Manual workarounds begin.
Teams lose visibility.
Operations slow down.
And patients are the ones who suffer.
Enterprise buyers understand this.
That is why security reviews ask about disaster recovery, backups, and incident response plans.
Buyers want to know how your health tech product gets back up and running when something goes wrong.
Backup Testing Instills Confidence
A disaster recover strategy earns your buyers trust when the strategy has been tested.
UHSP’s CIO/CISO shared that their team now tests backups from multiple locations, validates it, and documents the process so the organization can recover when key personnel is unavailable.
That is the evidence buyers want to see.
A policy is useful.
A backup schedule is useful.
A reliable vendor name is useful.
But a documented disaster recovery test documented gives your buyer something stronger.
It shows your company has practiced bringing systems back.
Health Tech products sit inside a buyer’s operational workflow so this is critical.
Think about it...
A patient engagement tool.
An AI scribe.
A scheduling system.
A care coordination platform.
If your system goes down, your buyer has to manage the impact.
The security review is the buyer's opportunity to understand the risk before adoption.
What Health Tech Vendors Should Be Ready to Explain
Before a security review, health tech companies should be ready to explain their recovery strategy...clearly.
This includes...
Where backups live.
How they are protected.
Whether they are isolated.
How often testing happens.
What your RTO is.
Documentation proving the backups worked.
Your strongest answer is a clear answer.
Prepare For Your Next Buyer Review
Enterprise buyers are trying to understand whether your company can recover without becoming an operational nightmare.
That is why disaster recovery is in the security review conversation.
Yes, your product may be software.
But to your buyer, it sits inside a care, revenue, or operational workflow.
When that workflow breaks, the buyer wants confidence that your team can bring it back up.
Before your next security review, test your recovery responses by asking yourself the following.
Can your team explain the restore process?
Can you show the last test?
Can you prove the backup worked?
Can you recover without within your RTO?
Can someone other than one key employee execute the process?
That is the evidence buyers want.
Because in healthcare, recovery is part of trust.
👉 If security reviews are starting to feel harder to manage, the Health Tech Security Review Playbook breaks down what healthcare buyers expect before they trust a vendor with PHI and operational risk.
Request it here.
-Larry | Founder & Principal CISO, Inherent Security
