How did cybersecurity become a front-line issue for digital health?
By 2024, healthcare had become one of the most targeted sectors for cyberattacks, with ransomware incidents hitting hospitals, payers, and infrastructure providers. High-profile breaches disrupted claims processing, forced hospitals back to paper workflows, and exposed sensitive health data affecting tens of millions of people.
For digital health startups, this changed the conversation. Security stopped being a “we’ll harden it later” item and became a gating factor for enterprise deals, partnerships, and regulatory comfort. In 2025, regulators are pushing even harder.
What has actually changed in the regulatory landscape?
Three big shifts are shaping expectations for startups:
- Healthcare-specific Cybersecurity Performance Goals (CPGs)
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has published cybersecurity performance goals specifically for the healthcare and public health sector. These goals are designed to help organizations prioritize high-impact practices—things like multi-factor authentication, network segmentation, timely patching, and incident response planning. - Proposed updates to HIPAA and related rules
Draft changes and policy proposals aim to tighten safeguards for electronic protected health information (ePHI), potentially making some practices that were “best effort” effectively mandatory—such as encryption at rest and in transit, enhanced logging, and more detailed risk assessments. - Buyer expectations leaping ahead of regulations
Health systems, payers, and large employers have raised their bar. Vendor security questionnaires now dig into your architecture, third-party risk management, and incident response readiness. Even if some measures remain “voluntary” on paper, they’re becoming de facto requirements to win contracts.
What does this mean for early-stage digital health founders?
For startups, the message is clear: security can’t wait for Series C. The earlier you embed it into your product and processes, the less painful (and expensive) it will be.
Concretely, that means:
- Designing your system as if a security review is inevitable—because it is.
- Avoiding shortcuts like hard-coded secrets, unmanaged admin backdoors, and unvetted third-party components.
- Treating security as a product feature that buyers care about, not just an IT concern.
Which cybersecurity practices should startups prioritize?
You don’t need a 50-person security team, but you do need a focused set of high-leverage controls. For most digital health startups, priorities include:
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA) for admin, support, and high-privilege roles.
- Secure-by-default architectures – principle of least privilege, network segmentation, no shared logins.
- Robust encryption for data in transit (TLS everywhere) and at rest.
- Vendor and third-party risk management – understanding what your cloud, analytics, or comms providers can see, and how they secure it.
- Regular vulnerability scanning and patching – for both infrastructure and dependencies.
- Incident response planning – even a lightweight playbook for detection, containment, communication, and recovery.
These map closely to the healthcare Cybersecurity Performance Goals regulators are encouraging the sector to adopt.
How can you integrate security into product design rather than bolting it on?
A few practical strategies:
- Make privacy and security part of your discovery work
When mapping user journeys, also map data flows: what’s captured, where it goes, who sees it, how long it persists. - Involve security in design reviews
Even if “security” is one person wearing many hats, give them a voice when designing new features or integrations. - Use secure defaults, not optional add-ons
Strong passwords, MFA, sensible session timeouts, and safe logging should be built-in, not “enterprise-only” toggles. - Design for least privilege
UX and permissions design should go hand-in-hand: users should only see and do what their role requires.
How do you talk about security with buyers without overpromising?
Enterprise customers don’t expect startups to be perfect—but they do expect seriousness and transparency.
Be ready to:
- Describe your security architecture at a high level.
- Share a summary of your security policies (access control, incident response, backups).
- Provide recent penetration test or vulnerability scan summaries when you’re further along.
- Be honest about what you’re still improving—and show a roadmap.
In 2025, cybersecurity isn’t a compliance tax you reluctantly pay. It’s a trust signal and a commercial differentiator. Digital health startups that treat it as a first-class design concern will find enterprise doors much easier to open.
