As federal regulators step up enforcement of privacy and security requirements under the HIPAA Omnibus Rule, healthcare organizations face key compliance challenges, including dealing with their business associates and ensuring that patient information is adequately protected to avoid breaches. The healthcare sector, as well as government sector systems handling health-related data, are increasingly targets of cybercriminals because of the information those systems contain, which ranges from Social Security numbers to health insurance identification numbers.
What are healthcare entities' key struggles? What are they doing to step up compliance while also improving overall protection of patient data?
We conducted our third annual Healthcare Information Security Today survey to find out.
The 2014 survey sheds light on seven hot topics: * HIPAA Omnibus: Compliance is Challenging * Breach Prevention: Trend Analysis * Risk Assessments: Getting Better or Cutting Corners? * Encryption and Authentication: Room for Improvement * Mobile Tech: Inadequate Protection * Web Portals: Work in Progress * Priorities, Investments and Staffing
Keeping records secure is a challenge that doctors, public health officials and federal regulators are just beginning to grasp. And, as two recent incidents at Howard University Hospital show, inadequate data security can affect huge numbers of people.
On May 14, federal prosecutors one of the hospital’s medical technicians with violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. The employee used her position at the hospital to gain access to patients’ names, addresses and Medicare numbers in order to sell their information.
Just a few weeks earlier, the hospital advised more than 34,000 patients that their medical data had been compromised. A contractor working with the hospital had