Health care's resistance to data breaches is at an all-time
low, and the epidemic is getting worse. So says a recent study from Ponemon
Institute, the leading data privacy and security research center. The numbers
are intimidating: 90 percent of the country's health care organizations have
had a data breach, such a huge percentage that it's affected more than 120
million people — one-third
of the US population. Most breaches are due not to negligence, but to
criminal attacks. And the pace of these attacks is accelerating: while 37
million health care records were compromised between 2010 and 2014, 99 million
were compromised in the first quarter of 2015 alone.
However, the Ponemon study also offers some hope. More than
two-thirds of health care data breaches are discovered during audits or
assessments, and it turns out they're primarily caused by weak, stolen, or lost
credentials and lost or stolen mobile devices — vulnerabilities that are
relatively easy to address.
If you're a health
care company, it's time to apply some preventive care. Our security guide,"The 5 Critical Elements of Risk Assessment," will help you develop a
treatment plan. After reading it, contact us for next steps.
No comments:
Post a Comment