Healthcare Industry is Vulnerable to Cyber Attacks
An ID Experts study says that the increased use of smart phones and tablets is significantly increasing the risk of cyber attacks in the health care industry. It links the risk to these devices to not having proper malware and virus protection. The study also indicates that there has been a 100 percent increase in attacks in these types of organizations since 2010.
According to the study nearly 75% of the healthcare organizations that responded, believe that employee negligence is the biggest security risk. These same respondents to the study believe that more than 50% of their employee’s devices are not secure. Fewer than 25% of the organizations surveyed require employees to install antivirus or anti-malware software and even fewer organizations require a scan of the devices prior to allowing the devices to connect to the organizations network.
Approximately 88% of healthcare organizations allow employees to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). Besides the BYOD risks, these organizations face: public cloud service use abuse and frequent cyber attacks.
Healthcare organizations confidence in the Health Information Exchange systems that have been setup to share healthcare information between providers, hospitals and the government is very low. Almost 75% of organizations rank their confidence in these systems to either ‘somewhat confident’ or ‘not confident’. Many participants in the study say that security and privacy risks have actually increased due to unsecure exchanges of information between healthcare providers and the government as well as unsecure databases, or unsecure websites.
The study also found that healthcare organizations continue to struggle to comply with increasing complex federal and state privacy and security regulations.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Scott Greene of Evidence Solutions, Inc.
For over 30 years, Scott Greene has been helping companies meet the challenges of the swiftly evolving computer technology industry.
Directly from high school, Scott went to work for IBM. Scott studied Systems Engineering at the University of Arizona. He has since earned certifications in many products and programming languages.
The Evidence Solutions team analyzes data from Computers, Cell Phones, Black Boxes, Dispatch Systems, Medical Records, Email systems and more. Scott then explains the digital evidence in plain English.
Scott’s extensive knowledge draws clients to him from all over the United States as well as Internationally for consulting, Forensics and expert witness services. His extensive and diverse experience allows him to be an expert in many facets of digital and electronic evidence. Scott, a sought after speaker and educator, travels throughout the country sharing his knowledge and presenting to local, regional, national and International organizations.
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Disclaimer: While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this publication, it is not intended to provide legal advice as individual situations will differ and should be discussed with an expert and/or lawyer.For specific technical or legal advice on the information provided and related topics, please contact the author.
