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Healthcare Data Breaches From Cyberattacks, Criminals Eclipse Employee Error For The First Time
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DungT593
DungT593,
 User Rank: Apprentice
5/13/2015 | 9:40:23 AM
Malicious Insiders and Employees Negligence
What stuck out to me was the percentage for malicious insiders and employees negligence. These numbers can be related since an unattended and unlock workstation can be quickly attacked before the technician, nurse, etc. comes back. In big hospitals, trespassers can be a major threat. Automatic locking tools can add another level of security. 
Ulf Mattsson
Ulf Mattsson,
 User Rank: Moderator
5/7/2015 | 4:43:01 PM
I think it is time to re-think our security approach
I'm concerned that "close to 45% of all data breaches in healthcare are due to criminal activity," and "a 125% increase in such activity over the past five years."

With more stringent data security requirements and regular audits on the horizon, in addition to
increasing attacks on PHI data, organizations should act now to protect their data, before it's too late.

Ponemon Institute published another interesting survey related to the recent spate of high-profile cyber attacks. According to the survey database security was recommended by 49% of respondents, but the study found that organizations continue to allocate the bulk of their budget (40%) to network security and only 19% to database security.

Ponemon concluded that "This is often because organizations have traditionally spent money on network security and so it is earmarked in the budget and requires no further justification."

We are seeing a number of common issues across recent data breaches, stealing our most sensitive data, and I think it is time to re-think our security approach and be more data-centric.  It is critical to protect sensitive data wherever it is stored. Educating users is not enough and I think that policies should be automatically enforced.


Ulf Mattsson, CTO Protegrity.
RetiredUser
RetiredUser,
 User Rank: Ninja
5/7/2015 | 12:24:25 PM
Don’t Rule Out Fear as a Security Tool
For larger health orgs who have had a large number of internal data breeches, I know from keeping an ear to the grapevine (I work in healthcare IT) that fear has as much to do with the lower numbers than employee awareness training.  Your job should be important to you as an individual regardless your moral compass, and there have been heavy penalties and punishment doled out to those who are intent on breeching patient confidentiality.  That punishment not only removes you from your job, but makes the next one difficult to obtain, too.  If you are serious about remaining employed and developing a solid career, it's a no-brainer that respecting a patient's right to privacy should be your daily responsibility. 

Personally, I feel patient awareness training should include a darker version of what can happen relayed through anecdotes to employees to reinforce this point.  Fear can really work in favor of InfoSec as a form of social engineering.  Sad, but true.
RyanSepe
RyanSepe,
 User Rank: Ninja
5/7/2015 | 10:46:30 AM
Re: User Awareness Responsble?
I feel that you hit one of most quintessential security implementation issues. Small organizations normally do not have as much financial backing to implement strong security safeguards. This is a difficult paradox. You need to implement safeguards to secure the data and to save your organizations financial aspects (reputation, revenue, data), but don't have the financial backing to implement those safeguards.


That being said, there are definitley ways to sure up security w/o breaking the bank.
Kelly Jackson Higgins
Kelly Jackson Higgins,
 User Rank: Strategist
5/7/2015 | 10:41:05 AM
Re: User Awareness Responsble?
Ah, good perspective on that, Ryan. Thanks. The study didn't drill down into the reasons behind it, but a lot of the orgs getting hit were smaller ones, Ponemon said. And my guess is they weren't doing much in user awareness training.
RyanSepe
RyanSepe,
 User Rank: Ninja
5/7/2015 | 10:39:18 AM
Re: User Awareness Responsble?
I would have to lean in that direction as well. However, the healthcare network I worked for implemented user awareness on an onboarding and yearly process. I would think for the large healthcare organizations that they would follow a similar approach.
Kelly Jackson Higgins
Kelly Jackson Higgins,
 User Rank: Strategist
5/7/2015 | 10:37:15 AM
Re: User Awareness Responsble?
I'm not sure healthcare has been at the leading edge of user education, so my gut is that it's more the bad guys have found a new soft target. 
RyanSepe
RyanSepe,
 User Rank: Ninja
5/7/2015 | 8:27:16 AM
User Awareness Responsble?
Many institutions have put great signifance into education and user awareness training in the past couple of years. Could it be that these principles could directly correlate to the decrease in user negligence? Or has the attack vector pivoted to where malicious attempts yield a much higher success rate of infiltrating companies?


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