Hacking incidents and other forms of cybercrime come between patients and the healthcare professionals focused on providing quality care.
Hackers continue to be a bane in the world of medicine. However, some technology professionals actually leverage the techniques of these criminals to make patient data more secure.
When considering HIPAA, technical personnel working in medicine have an additional reason to develop robust data security practices. Playing the role of an ethical hacker helps properly vet access to their organization’s systems. Perhaps their efforts serve to inspire your own team’s data security practice?
Cybercrime putting Patient Data at Risk
A survey conducted by a data security organization last year chronicled and analyzed the adverse impact to the healthcare industry caused by cybercriminals in the United States. Their findings offer a sense of the scope of the cybersecurity problem currently affecting the medical world. Some of them include:
- The healthcare industry experiences at least one cybercrime incident each month.
- Patient data was compromised at half of all healthcare organizations in the previous year.
- Only 50 percent of healthcare organizations have prepared an incident response plan.
- 78 percent of these organizations suffered a data security incident related to a known vulnerability at least three months old.
- 63 percent of these organizations experienced downtime due to a denial of service cyberattack.
Remember, these survey findings are nearly one year old as of the time of this writing. The scourge of cybercrime continues to get worse as each month passes, and even medical devices aren’t immune. So, how are hackers able to protect patient data and otherwise keep healthcare companies safe from cyberattack?
Ethical Hacking to the Rescue
Ethical hacking is a cybersecurity technique where professionals vet the protection of any company’s technical infrastructure by attempting to hack into their systems. The practice is seeing wide use throughout the business world. Healthcare organizations benefit from keeping patient data and other information secure – an important consideration in this era of HIPAA, as noted earlier.
The fact ethical hacking certifications now exist serves as an example of the growth of the practice. IT professionals currently working in data security need to consider becoming certified in this area. Healthcare companies should keep this certification in mind when looking to hire cybersecurity professionals.
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