Medical Data Breaches: Cybersecurity Measures for Medical Data

Protecting data within the healthcare industry poses significant challenges. Healthcare providers and their business associates must find a balance between safeguarding patient privacy, delivering quality care, and complying with stringent regulations like HIPAA and GDPR. The guidelines for handling protected health information (PHI) require healthcare providers and organizations to implement strict data protection measures to avoid severe penalties and fines.

HIPAA doesn’t prescribe specific technologies; instead, it mandates that covered entities ensure the security, accessibility, and authorized use of patient information. If a company does not want to face the serious consequences of a hack, it must provide healthcare cybersecurity.

How to Protect Medical Data from Hackers?

1 Educate Staff

Security across all industries is greatly compromised by the human element, with the healthcare field being particularly vulnerable. Mishaps or neglect by people can lead to catastrophic and costly outcomes for healthcare organizations. Equipping healthcare employees with security awareness training empowers them with the necessary knowledge to make wise decisions and exercise caution when managing patient data.

2 Data Usage Controls

Protective data controls surpass the advantages of access controls and monitoring by promptly flagging and blocking risky or malicious data activity. Healthcare organizations can utilize data controls to restrict specific actions involving sensitive data, such as web uploads, unauthorized email sends, copying to external drives, or printing.

3 Using a VPN

For patient privacy protection, a valuable tool is a VPN. It helps provide medical records protection using data encryption technology when sending and receiving data. The advantage of a VPN is that it can be configured on any device: from an iPhone to a Windows PC or Smart TV. Employees can even figure out how to set up a VPN on iPhones themselves. This procedure requires a couple of minutes. At the same time, VPN is not associated with high maintenance costs, and all users can use it, regardless of their skills in working with electronics.

4 Encrypt Data

Medical data encryption proves to be an invaluable data-safeguarding technique for healthcare organizations. By encrypting data during transmission and while at rest, healthcare providers and business associates raise the bar (ideally rendering it impassable) for potential attackers. Moreover, while HIPAA provides recommendations, precise data encryption measures aren’t explicitly mandated.

According to Health IT Security, there are two critical queries that healthcare organizations should consider to determine the appropriate encryption level and identify scenarios:

• Which data should be encrypted and decrypted to avert unauthorized access to electronic protected health information (ePHI) by either unauthorized individuals or applications?
• What decryption and encryption techniques are indispensable, rational, and suitable in the given context to deter unauthorized individuals?

5 Back up Data

Cyberattacks have the potential to expose sensitive patient information and compromise data integrity or availability. Take ransomware as an example to understand the magnitude of these incidents. Furthermore, natural disasters affecting a healthcare organization’s data center can result in catastrophic consequences if the data is not adequately backed up. Hence, it is crucial to frequently back up data offsite. Offsite data backups play a vital role in disaster recovery as well.

6 Smart Management of Connected Devices

When it comes to mobile devices, smartphones and tablets might be the first to come to mind. However, with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), connected devices are taking various forms. To ensure the security of connected devices:

• Maintain a separate network for IoT devices.
• Continuously monitor IoT device networks to detect sudden changes that may indicate a breach.
• Before using devices, disable non-essential services or remove them entirely.
• Whenever possible, use strong, multi-factor authentication.
• Keep all connected devices up-to-date with the latest patches.

7 Multi-Level Access

Access controls enhance healthcare data protection by limiting access to patient information and specific applications to authorized users. User authentication ensures that only approved individuals can access protected data. Multi-factor authentication, a recommended method, requires users to verify their identity using two or more validation methods, including:

• Information is known only to the user, such as a password or PIN.
• Something possessed solely by the authorized user, such as a card or key.
• Unique attributes of the authorized user, such as biometrics (facial recognition, fingerprints, or eye scanning).

8 Regular Risk Assessments

Although an audit trail aids in the post-incident identification of causes and essential details, proactive prevention holds equal significance. Regular risk assessments help uncover vulnerabilities or weak points in a healthcare organization’s security, deficiencies in employee education, and inadequacies in vendor security posture. By periodically evaluating and mitigating potential risks, healthcare providers and business associates can effectively minimize costly data breaches.

Conclusion

Any company that handles customer medical data must think about cybersecurity. This should be an important priority for companies to comply with HIPAA and GDPR requirements. Preventive measures are the most effective, but they also protect your reputation. It is not easy to restore lost trust, so it is better to simply maintain your reputation.