Healthcare Cyber Security: Healthcare CIOs and CSOs must improve

The state of healthcare cyber security & data protection: According to Wikipedia “there were 380 major cyber security data breaches in the United States in 2011, involving 500 or more patients’ records listed on the website kept by the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights.

So far, concerning Health care cyber security – the industry there has had approximately 18,059,831 “individuals affected,” and even that massive number is an under-count of the breach problem.”

Medical Health Records are some of the most valuable data around, with underground cyber crime market prices estimated to be roughly $50 per record. This recent article on CIO.com further highlights data security challenges faced by the health industry.

A global health data storm

According to this report compiled by the America National Standards Institute (ANSI), the Internet Security Alliance (ISA) and The Santa Fe Group/Shared Assessments Program Healthcare Working Group – nearly 39.5 million Electronic Health Records (EHRs) were breached by cyber attacks between 2005 and 2008.

Between September 2011 and November 2011, a government benefits program suffered the theft of EHRs of 4.9 million military personnel, the health information of 4 million patients of a reputable West Coast healthcare system were stolen electronically and a major academic medical center inadvertently disclosed the EHRs of 20,000 of its patients.

Clearly, Healthcare Cyber Security is at the heart of the Global  health data storm, with similar healthcare data breaches and electronic civil disobedience reported from all corners of the planet. Healthcare cyber security needs to be carefully addressed by IT professionals

How to navigate the Cyber-threat landscape: White Paper

The solution to this issue is deploying measures and technology that safeguards confidential data and assists organizations in navigating the Cyber Security Landscape. Our Comprehensive Cyber Security White Paper outlines the following key elements to securing confidential data:

• How to manage your ‘Attack Surface’
• Cyber Security Best Practice
• Reducing enterprise user data vulnerability
• How an endpoint data backup solution can address Cyber Security risk.

No organization (specifically healthcare or health insurance companies where Personal Information is stored) can afford to ignore the consequences of a data breach and the time for action is now.

As Larry Clinton (President and CEO of the Internet Security Alliance states: “Cyber Security is not an IT issue, it’s an enterprise-wide risk management issue that needs to be addressed in a much broader sense.”

Healthcare cyber security is not only pertinent for organisations to address considering the compliance and organisational risks, as a moral consideration the protection of healthcare records should be a top priority for companies in this industry.

For more on preventing data loss, data theft and data corruption, download our Cyber Security best practices paper