When hospitals have access to your electronic medical record, you get better care. Depending on what you\u2019re admitted for, readily available digital health information could be the difference between life and death.<\/p>\n
But information made digital is information made hackable. Hackers nab more than just your credit cards, social security number, and other demographic and financial information tied to your identity. Hospital breaches include theft of sensitive health information. It\u2019s modernity\u2019s big tradeoff between data access and data security. It\u2019s also a challenge for the next generation of precision medicine because a big-data-scale aggregate of detailed, sensitive health information is crucial for developing tomorrow\u2019s treatments and cures.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur speculation is that maybe there\u2019s a perfect solution for this tradeoff,\u201d says Xuefeng Jiang, lead author of a study out today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The research looks at exactly what kind of data hackers are going after when they attack hospitals.<\/p>\n
The study analyzes 1461 breaches from 1388 facilities (some breached multiple times) affecting 169 million patients between October 21, 2009 and July 1, 2019. Jiang and his team divided the type of data stolen into three categories: financial, demographic, and personal.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople think if you have more data visibility, [data] shared widely with researchers or with doctors, you\u2019re going to face more risk of potential breach\u2013 be more likely to lose data or get hacked,\u201d says Jiang. He feels this concern doesn\u2019t take into account the hacker mindset. Hackers are largely opportunistic, seeking mostly financial information. \u201cThey can\u2019t make money directly on patients\u2019 medical results.\u201d<\/p>\n
The study shows that out of the 168 million patients affected, 70% of the breaches impacting approximately 95% of patients were targeting demographic or financial information. Hackers picked up medical information exclusive of demographic or financial information in only 16% of the breaches affecting 6 million patients. Sensitive medical information was stolen in only 2% of breaches impacting 2.4 million patients.<\/p>\n
Jiang thinks cybercriminals are not targeting sensitive medical information in order to pull off elaborate blackmail schemes. Instead, the relatively small percentage of medical-information-only hacks is most likely a byproduct of hackers reaching in and grabbing clumps of whatever data they can get.<\/p>\n
If sensitive medical history isn\u2019t the target, Jiang thinks hospitals and research institutions can share important health information more securely if they use separate systems: Use one system to store and share medical information between healthcare providers and researchers. Use a separate system to store and share demographic and financial information between hospital administration staff.<\/p>\n
For anyone concerned about disclosing medical information, Jiang\u2019s personal takeaway from this analysis is emphatic: \u201cDon\u2019t worry about sharing [medical] information with your doctors.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe found more than half of data breaches could be attributed to healthcare providers\u2019 internal mistakes or negligence.\u201d Jiang lists the most common ways hackers infiltrate hospitals:<\/p>\n
Not encrypting laptop computers
\nUsing \u2018cc instead of \u2018bcc when emailing patients
\nNot revoking former employees\u2019 login credentials after employment is terminated
\nThe researchers also found that mobile devices (laptops, USB drives, etc.) are linked to more data breaches than hardcopy paper records or breaches on network servers. Results suggest that training hospital staff in cybersecurity behaviors and limiting the use of mobile devices might go a long way to help mitigate data breaches.<\/p>\n
For an in-depth discussion about our world built on a cyberinfrastructure, meet the woman who drafted the cybersecurity, infrastructure protection, emergency preparedness, bioterror, and science and technology directives that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (video interview from Jesse\u2019s Office with Kiersten Todt, produced by the author of this article).<\/p>\n
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What cybercriminals steal when they hack hospitals When hospitals have access to your electronic medical record, you get better care. Depending on what you\u2019re admitted for, readily available digital health information could be the difference between life and death. But information made digital is information made hackable. Hackers nab more than just your credit cards, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":17023,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,37,31,38,11,33,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-frontpage-article","category-healthcare-it","category-it-security","category-security","category-small-medium-business-it-solutions","category-technical-consulting"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"es","enabled_languages":["en","es"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n