Privacy & Security
Healthcare security professionals, listen up: This year, for the first time ever in a Ponemon Institute data breach report, cyberattacks topped the list as the No. 1 cause of healthcare breaches, surpassing all other categories.
The IT infrastructure office at the Department of Health and Human Services has some serious security problems. This after the office received a less than satisfactory security report card from the Office of Inspector General this week.
Every 60 seconds, 232 computers are infected with malware; 12 websites are successfully hacked; more than 571 new websites are created, and 204 million emails are sent. Combine this with the fact that on the black market, medical records are worth $60, compared to credit card data, which typically sells for $20. "That makes us a significant targets," said Intermountain Healthcare's CISO Karl West.
Marking its entry into the patient identification market, health IT security company Imprivata has acquired Tampa, Florida-based HT Systems, which develops technology for palm-vein-based biometric patient ID.
Former National Coordinator for Health IT David Brailer, MD, argues in an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal that it's time for Americans to take charge of their medical records.
You've probably heard of it once or twice over the past few years. But it's a concept that still needs some more definition. Our columnist explains why she's not a fan of "patient engagement."
Another healthcare employee opened an email that turned out to be a phishing scam that ended up compromising the protected health information and Social Security numbers of 39,000 patients.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, former National Coordinator David Blumenthal, MD, conjures a vision of connected healthcare in 2030. He notes, however, that "this future won’t materialize unless some problems are solved along the way."
How many breaches, how many compromises of patients' confidential medical information does it take before there are some questions asked of an organization and its security policies? One health system, for instance, recently announced its seventh large HIPAA breach.
Security professional to demo a GPU-based system for launching 1 million password-cracking attempts per minute. Could you fend that off?