REYKJAVIK, Iceland, June 16, 2026 — Varist today introduced its DICOM Detection Engine™, a specialized system designed to safeguard electronic health records (EHR) and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) from all known malware, including the emerging threat of AI-powered malware.

As attackers increasingly use artificial intelligence to automate, scale and customize their attacks, the engine integrates large-scale file scanning with real-time simulation of suspicious files to detect and analyze emerging threats within milliseconds.

Imaging as an attack surface

Medical imaging environments process millions of files daily, creating a vast, often underprotected attack surface that’s vulnerable to emerging threats and AI-generated malware. Varist’s DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) Detection Engine helps secure healthcare networks and medical imaging infrastructure by providing specialized detection for imaging file streams and ultra-large files, without introducing delays that jeopardize patient care.

Architected for performance in demanding healthcare settings, the DICOM Detection Engine monitors and safeguards critical communications, preventing them from becoming malware vectors, including:

•PACS and teleradiology platforms

•Electronic Health Record (EHR) platforms

•Hospital and healthcare networks

•Radiology Information Systems (RIS)

•Third-party cybersecurity services

“A picture is worth a thousand words, especially when lives depend on it, and threat actors may be looking to use that to their advantage,� says Varist CTO Siggi Petursson. “Varist’s specialized detection for healthcare environments finds new self-evolving threats designed to evade detection by conventional systems, without adding delays or compromising patients’ care and privacy.�

Securing medical imaging

As the universal standard for medical imaging files, PACS relies on specialized protocols and formats to ensure interoperability across imaging technologies, including X-rays, CT and PET scans, MRIs, ultrasound, and other systems. Varist’s DICOM Detection Engine fills security gaps left by conventional scanning and sandboxing, detecting both known and unknown threats, including malware that attempts to exploit life-critical images.

AI-scale detection

•Dedicated detection engines for DICOM, HL7 and FHIR, three formats used in PACS and EHR platforms.

•Hyperscale DICOM header analysis to find headers modified to turn imaging files into executables that deliver malicious payloads

•Full-file scanning of all file sizes from 5 MB (X-rays) to 3 GB (large MRIs) to find threats anywhere within the file, including image data regions that conventional scanners ignore

•Predictive payload detectionsimulates the behaviors of suspicious files to enable Zero-Day detection of novel DICOM exploits that have not yet been cataloged in signature databases

•Local scanning that supports privacy and compliance requirements: Organizations can locally scan and analyze files without uploading sensitive protected health information to public cloud systems. This approach helps meet the U.S. HIPAA Security Rule safeguards for the confidentiality and integrity of electronic protected health information and aligns with cyber insurance requirements.

Hybrid engine highlights

Varist’s hybrid approach to malware detection raises the bar for real-time detection and analysis:

•Each Varist instance processes ~500 files per second to provide full real-time coverage for high-throughput imaging workflows

•Suspicious files are analyzed in under 9ms — well within the tolerances of real-time PACS communications — with a false-positive rate of less than 0.001%

•Architecture scales horizontally to match the demands of large, multi-site networks and multi-cloud deployments

About Varist: Varist (varist.com) is a cybersecurity innovator delivering AI?scale malware detection through its advanced Hybrid Detection Engine™, which identifies known and zero?day threats in real time at hyperscale. Leveraging technology proven to perform over 500 billion file scans per day, Varist combines predictive detection, real?time simulation, and extremely low false?positive rates to help enterprises and OEM partners counter increasingly complex, AI?powered threats. Its hybrid approach — scanning every file, simulating suspicious behavior at unprecedented speed, and assigning automated risk scores — enables organizations to stop threats earlier, reduce operational burden, and secure environments at global scale. 

June 16th, 2026 | News Alerts | Top Stories