How common are healthcare-related security breaches?
Should you be concerned with information security in healthcare?
The Office of Civil Rights has ramped up HIPAA audits in 2016, with a 10% budget boost.
Some early findings in 2016 suggest they’re on the right path. The Identity Theft Resource Center has released a report of data breaches in the first 12 weeks of the year. The finding that pops out to us: 83.1% of all the data breached comes from the healthcare and medical sector. In total, about a third of the total breaches were in this industry, but the volume of data breached puts the focus deeply on healthcare.
More visibility
These increased breaches come at a time when more folks are paying attention.
We had to turn off our Google Alert for “data security breach.” There are too many to follow.
And official findings are becoming a scarlet letter. One company has even built a directory, a Yelp of healthcare, that connects HIPAA violations to real-world healthcare companies.
Would you trust a company that isn’t a good protector of your health information?
Is your Patient Health Information secure?
What to do?
The name of the game is pro-active.
If you wait for a breach, you’ve waited too long. If you have a security team, make sure your business is ready for an audit, and ready to face an attack attempt. (Hint: Insiders are more likely than outsiders to cause a data breach — policies and adherence to those policies matter.)
If your security team is too busy — or non-existent — we can help with a DIY kit or through our rent-a-CISO program.
But the most important thing is to protect the data that matters most.