Healthcare data is prime targets for hackers. What can healthcare organizations do to better protect all of that sensitive information?

January was not a particularly bad month for electronic health record (EHR) breaches. Still, in just those 31 days, nearly a half-million records were exposed to unauthorized viewers.

According to the HIPAA Journal, the top four breaches in January were all the result of hacking or an IT incident, exposing more than 387,000 records. While these numbers pale in comparison to the tens of millions of records involved in recent credit bureau and social media hacks, the sensitive nature of the records amplify the damage done.

What's more, the number of records lost to hacking or IT incident has steadily increased year over year since 2009 (though authors of the "January 2018 Healthcare Data Breach Report" note that at least some of that increase could be due to a lack of reporting in earlier years). 

The reports points to several reasons why healthcare breaches continue to occur. First, they're valuable records that have currency with criminals and nation-state actors. Next, healthcare organizations come in a dazzling array of sizes, with an equivalent array of IT security skill levels at their service. Finally, almost every step along the records trail involves a human, and humans are infamously fallible. So what's a conscientious organization to do?

In this article, we look at seven ways to better secure this sensitive healthcare data. This is far from an exhaustive list, but each one is something that an organization can reasonably do to reduce its risk. Of note, many of these points can be applied to any organization with sensitive data to protect.

Have you found other steps worth taking to protect sensitive data? What have you tried and found effective? Let us know in the comments section, below.

(Image: pandpstock001)

 

 

 

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About the Author(s)

Curtis Franklin, Principal Analyst, Omdia

Curtis Franklin Jr. is Principal Analyst at Omdia, focusing on enterprise security management. Previously, he was senior editor of Dark Reading, editor of Light Reading's Security Now, and executive editor, technology, at InformationWeek, where he was also executive producer of InformationWeek's online radio and podcast episodes

Curtis has been writing about technologies and products in computing and networking since the early 1980s. He has been on staff and contributed to technology-industry publications including BYTE, ComputerWorld, CEO, Enterprise Efficiency, ChannelWeb, Network Computing, InfoWorld, PCWorld, Dark Reading, and ITWorld.com on subjects ranging from mobile enterprise computing to enterprise security and wireless networking.

Curtis is the author of thousands of articles, the co-author of five books, and has been a frequent speaker at computer and networking industry conferences across North America and Europe. His most recent books, Cloud Computing: Technologies and Strategies of the Ubiquitous Data Center, and Securing the Cloud: Security Strategies for the Ubiquitous Data Center, with co-author Brian Chee, are published by Taylor and Francis.

When he's not writing, Curtis is a painter, photographer, cook, and multi-instrumentalist musician. He is active in running, amateur radio (KG4GWA), the MakerFX maker space in Orlando, FL, and is a certified Florida Master Naturalist.

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