A recent study demonstrated how problematic health record disposal is. The Privacy and Security Rules of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) make it clear how to properly get rid of health records while maintaining the confidentiality of patients and protecting their rights. The study indicates that poor disposal of records occurs frequently and is a strong area to target if you want to bolster your defenses against HIPAA violations. Along with a concern with paper PHI in an era when it can get overlooked, it is crucial to have strong protections for the increasing volume of electronic records as well.
Office 365 or Google Docs for HIPAA Compliance
Organizations that handle healthcare data, whether they are covered entities (healthcare providers, plans, or data clearinghouses) or their business associates, must meet the requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). HIPAA and HITECH (the Health Information for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009) are US federal laws that created regulations related to how sensitive personal health data is used and disclosed (essentially in an effort to protect it and make it accessible to patients). It is necessary for doctors, hospitals, health insurers, and other healthcare organizations to meet the stipulations within these laws and to have the responsibilities within the relationship defined by a business associate agreement (BAA). The BAA contract is important because it clarifies all aspects of data creation, storage, receipt, and transmission so that accountability is possible for all privacy and security concerns.
Healthcare Hosting Checklist: What is HIPAA Compliant Healthcare Hosting?
What should you look for in a good healthcare host? Healthcare hosting providers must comply with HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, which means they must protect and secure patient records. When you look at healthcare hosting providers, you want to know how HIPAA audit-ready the healthcare host is.
How Does Employee Monitoring Software Provide HIPAA Compliance?
Inside the healthcare industry is an abundance of sensitive and valuable data. This has created a massive attack surface. HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) was created to minimize the attack surface and create a national standard for security and privacy of healthcare-related data.
Just how many healthcare-related data records have been breached? According to the HIPAA Journal, approximately 54.25% of the U.S. population has been subjected to a data breach between 2009 and 2017. HIPAA Journal states that the above percentage equates out to 176,709,305 records stolen.
Orangeworm: Need-to-Know Information for Healthcare IT
A security report released on April 23, 2018 found that there was a growing threat presented by Orangeworm, a cybercrime alliance that was going after organizations within healthcare and similar fields using a backdoor known as Kwampirs.
Kwampirs is a Trojan horse, as indicated by the NJ Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Cell. When attackers deploy this malware, they are able to remotely access the devices that are infected with it. Once the attackers access the machines and execute the Trojan, it begins to decrypt and extract a copy of its primary dynamic link library (DLL) payload. (What is DLL injection? DLL injection is a technique that is often used for Trojans. The pen-testing industry blog Penetration Testing Lab noted that DLL injection enables an intruder to run whatever script they want within another process’s address space. In the event that the process involved has heightened privileges, the nefarious party might be able to run sinister code within a DLL file that would further increase their privileges and, in turn, allow them to inflict widespread damage.)
Growth in Healthcare Apps & Why They Need HIPAA Compliant Hosting
Industry analysts agree the mobile health (mHealth) market will skyrocket. Mordor Intelligence and BIS Research both released reports in February 2018 that looked at the market growth of medical software. The expansion of options for healthcare providers, plans, and data clearinghouses is exciting. However, apps dealing with sensitive medical data must use HIPAA-compliant hosting – in part so that you are aligned with federal law and can avoid federal fines, but also as privacy and security risk-mitigation.
Health IT in a Digital World
The world’s computers contain massive amounts of health data. Three out of every ten data storage systems are within healthcare. One patient creates nearly 80 megabytes of electronic protected health information (ePHI), including electronic medical records (EMRs), images, and other confidential data. In other words, this industry is the realm of big data – huge quantities of data, both structured and unstructured, that can be mined by organizations and studied to their benefit, but that is so voluminous that it is challenging to process it through traditional program and database methods.
Simply from a standpoint of how to handle and understand it, this data can be the source of many headaches.
Regardless of whether big data can be overwhelming, understanding and using it is a huge point of focus for those within the healthcare information technology (HIT) field – as it should be. The data has clear values to healthcare firms from numerous perspectives, not just in lowering costs but also as clinical information and as fodder to improve operations. Just to look at the first of those, McKinsey estimated the total worth of healthcare big data (in terms of the insights it could provide, its “data-related value”) at greater than $300 billion.
The Future of Machine Learning and AI in Healthcare Security
According to a 2017 report from ABI Research, the comprehensive healthcare damages from cybercrime will amount to greater than $1 trillion in 2018. Since healthcare firms want to avoid the huge costs of a breach (and all the ramifications related to HIPAA compliance and reputation), there is a huge incentive to adopt more intuitive and adaptive security protections.
Internet of Things vs. Internet of Medical Things
As processors have declined in price and wireless networks have become more prevalent (to the point of near ubiquity), the Internet of Things (IoT) has become not just possible, but inevitable. The IoT is a collection of many devices worldwide, billions of them, all assimilating and sharing data through the Internet. The IoT is made up of many different types of items, ranging from airplanes to refrigerators, from thermostats to pills. One of the chief reasons the IoT is so exciting to people is that it allows, through the connection to the Web, each of these devices or endpoints a level of autonomous “smartness” that would otherwise not be possible. The increase in those endpoints’ ability to intelligently process and analyze data allows them to interact without any manual intervention. It also means that the Internet is being more comprehensively integrated into the physical environment, at a global scale.
Physiology of Fear Driving Healthcare IT – or Is It Real?
The healthcare cybersecurity market is expanding at an incredible rate. An April 2016 Grand View Research report projected that the scope of the industry would reach $10.85 billion by 2022. That may sound high, but it now looks like it was an underestimate: a February 2018 analysis released by Market Research Future predicts that health information technology (HIT) security will rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22% through 2022, ballooning from $4.8 billion to $15.82 billion.
