You may be wondering why data security is important in healthcare. Underestimation of the importance of data security for healthcare can result in devastating consequences, such as personal data theft and financial fraud. In the past few years, the number of healthcare data breaches has risen at an exponential rate. According to Statista, the total annual number of data compromises in the U.S. healthcare sector has grown from 16 cases in 2005 to 340 incidents in 2022.
The main reason for frequent healthcare data attacks is the high financial motivation of cybercriminals. The internet is awash with information on how costly healthcare data is. To be exact: medical information is worth 10 to 40 times more on the black market than credit card information.
It isn’t easy to detect a cybercriminal and bring him to punishment. But it is much easier to sue a healthcare provider with poor medical data security mechanisms for the loss of privacy that made a patient feel vulnerable and unsafe. So every healthcare provider should develop a proper healthcare data security strategy to avoid the nasty consequences of data breaches.
Data Security Threats in Healthcare
Healthcare data is the storehouse of precious personal data, such as a patient’s medical history, Social Security number, and credit card information. This information can help intruders violate patient data security and use sensitive information for soliciting money.
Also, data thieves can use this information to open bank accounts or apply for loans without the knowledge of the patient, which, at the very least, can ruin their credit history. For hospitals, data breaches can ruin their reputations and give them the title of an unreliable partner.
The COVID-19 outbreaks stimulated the rapid transition to telemedicine and caused more healthcare data to swim in the digital ocean. The HIPAA Journal reports that the healthcare data breach rate has more than doubled in five years. Therefore, protecting healthcare data should become a top priority for all providers of healthcare services.
So how to prevent healthcare data breaches? Healthcare organizations must prevent data breaches by leveraging modern security protocols and investing in strong security systems. Therefore, it is essential to identify weak points of data security within an organization to develop a successful data protection strategy.
Factors That Increase The Risk of Healthcare Data Breaches
Legacy systems
Many organizations have been using healthcare data management systems designed long ago when the top priority was to make systems interact with each other and support the workflows of a healthcare establishment.
Today, establishing data security in healthcare information systems is an urgent task for all healthcare providers. Legacy systems provide hackers with simplified access to sensitive data since outdated systems do not support protection mechanisms against unauthorized access or modern encryption algorithms.
Moreover, outdated systems often provide limited logging and monitoring options. Logging and monitoring allow for detecting and preventing healthcare data breaches by blocking unauthorized access to patients’ data.
Legacy systems are difficult to maintain since they were built using outdated technologies. Specialists learn new technologies to keep up with the market requirements. As a result, finding personnel experienced in utilizing old technologies and supporting legacy systems is problematic.
Lack of control for connected devices
The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) in healthcare has become more popular in the context of this industry. Devices and apps help patients access healthcare data in time, but they also pose a significant security risk. Connected devices require exceptional control to prevent data breaches.
Connected devices become targets of frequent attacks because of the lack of access control, authentication, and encryption. The IoT concept is based on the need to use technologies for connecting devices to establish fast data exchange. However, the lack of solid security protocols, control, and visibility of connected devices causes a risk of data breaches.
Another IoT security problem is caused by the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy. This IT policy is meant to streamline workflow by providing caregivers access to patient data via personal devices. However, smartphones and laptops are at significant risk of cyber attacks, so the policy doesn’t contribute to data security.
Read also: RBAC vs. ABAC
Lack of security practices
The exchange of medical records must be accompanied by a proper security mechanism. Lack of appropriate security practices causes huge risks of potential data breaches. Unfortunately, apart from legacy systems, healthcare organizations often skip timely data security training of personnel and follow poor security policies.
It is much easier to attack the system if the staff doesn’t stick to the best data protection practices, such as updating software or using strong passwords. Developing a proper data security plan requires continuous security training for employees and investing in modern security technologies.
Consequences Of Neglecting Healthcare Data Security
Neglecting healthcare data security solutions can result in healthcare data breaches. Breaches create a risk of exposing personal and medical information that often results in identity theft and financial fraud. Let’s look at some of the most significant data breaches that occurred in 2022.
Shields Healthcare Group Data Breach
Shields Healthcare Group, a healthcare provider, has faced consolidated class action lawsuits because of a massive data breach that affected over 1.9 million patients. The last suspicious activity in the system occurred in March 2022, which led to a regulatory investigation, public scrutiny, and a lawsuit.
This lawsuit can result in reputational damage and significant financial penalties for Shields. The lawsuit claims Shields failed to take appropriate data protection measures, resulting in a massive breach of sensitive patient information. The poor protection measures from unauthorized access have become a potentially long-lasting legal action for Shields.
When it comes to healthcare data breaches, there is a risk of financial fraud and identity theft for patients affected by them. A lawsuit is a painful but effective way for a healthcare organization to realize the need to prioritize healthcare data protection, invest in robust cybersecurity solutions, and ensure compliance with data protection regulations.
Broward Health Data Breach
Another primary healthcare provider notified over 1.3 million patients about a massive data breach in October 2021. The cause for the breach in Broward Health’s system was unauthorized access to employee emails containing patients’ sensitive data. The exposed information includes names, dates of birth, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, medical records, and other confidential information.
This data breach’s consequences can be severe since it leaves patients at significant risk of medical identity theft, reputation damage, and financial extortion. Therefore, healthcare providers should follow a proactive approach to cybersecurity, assess risks regularly, and plan threat responses to overcome current data security issues in healthcare.
OneTouchPoint (OTP)
OneTouchPoint is a US-based mailing vendor. It faced a massive theft of sensitive data in July 2022. The attack exposed the personal data of over 2.65 million individuals. The stolen data included financial data, payment card information, names, addresses, Social Security numbers, medications, treatments, diagnoses, sexes, family histories, immunizations, and other information.
The theft can lead to significant harm and stress to customers due to the high sensitivity of the exposed information. Moreover, it caused many inconveniences since the clients now should carefully monitor their accounts and credit reports to detect suspicious activities.
Such ransomware attacks should become a wake-up call for providers of healthcare services and other collectors of sensitive data to find better solutions to secure patient data.
There are various types of healthcare security solutions. However, protecting sensitive patient data requires implementing basic security measures, such as data encryption, backup and recovery, access control, firewalls, and other measures.
All the mentioned solutions are essential to implement for data security in healthcare organizations. However, it is not enough to encrypt data or use a firewall but develop a robust data security plan to ensure the sufficiency of data security measures.
Types of Healthcare Data Security Solutions
FHIR specification doesn’t provide any set in stone security implementations and solutions, leaving it up to the developers to decide on the best solution for their specific healthcare context. Here are some of the primary types of healthcare data security solutions that are commonly implemented in FHIR and FHIR-based systems:
- Encryption: Data should be encrypted both in transit and at rest to protect it from unauthorized access. This includes using protocols like TLS (Transport Layer Security) for data in transit and encryption algorithms like AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) for data at rest.
- Access Control: Implementing robust access control mechanisms ensures that only authorized users and systems can access or manipulate the data. This involves using techniques such as role-based access control (RBAC), attribute-based access control (ABAC), strict authentication methods and any other healthcare data security software.
- Audit Trails: Keeping detailed logs of who accessed what data and when. This is crucial for compliance with healthcare regulations such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in the United States. Audit logs must be immutable and protected to ensure they themselves are not tampered with.
- Secure APIs: Since FHIR is API-driven, securing these APIs is crucial. This includes implementing standards such as OAuth 2.0 for authorization, OpenID Connect for authentication, and ensuring APIs are protected against common security threats (e.g., SQL injection, cross-site scripting).
- Network Security Solutions: Implementing firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) to monitor and protect the network traffic associated with FHIR servers.
- Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: Establishing and maintaining plans that ensure data availability and business functionality in the event of a disaster or data breach. This involves backups, data replication strategies, and failover mechanisms.
Implementing these security solutions involves a combination of technology, processes, and policies that align with legal and regulatory requirements and address the specific risks associated with healthcare data. For businesses operating FHIR servers or developing FHIR-based applications, prioritizing these security measures is essential to protect patient data and comply with healthcare regulations.
How To Ensure The Relevance Of Security Solutions
A comprehensive approach to health information data security and defining security guarantees the highest level of data protection in healthcare. Apply the following measures to ensure the relevance of data security solutions for healthcare.
HIPAA compliance
HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is the law that establishes requirements for healthcare information protection. HIPAA regulations refer to the Privacy Rule, which defines national healthcare data security standards in the U.S. for ensuring health data security, also known as PHI (protected health information).
HIPAA compliance is mandatory in the U.S. Failure to meet HIPAA provisions can lead organizations to a significant risk of data breaches. Moreover, they will likely face fines for non-compliance with national data protection requirements and a powerful reputation strike. Regulations include various safeguards that all healthcare organizations must implement.
Healthcare Data Security Plan
A security plan is a set of policies and measures to protect sensitive data from unauthorized access, modification, and other unwanted interactions. The plan must include the following components:
- examination of a system on the subject of potential threats and their possible impact;
- specification of access control implementation;
- an incident response guidance (define steps to diminish the impact of a data breach if one occurs);
- education of employees on their role in data safety (explain the importance of securing healthcare data and consequences of data leaks, introduce staff to the best data protection practices)
- monitoring the effectiveness of a security plan (regular checkups and updates of security measures defined by the plan).
Kodjin Is Ready To Help You With A Healthcare Data Security Plan Development
We know how to prevent security breaches in healthcare from unauthorized access and provide FHIR-based data management tools. Our team developed the ONC-compliant Kodjin FHIR server, which supports SMART on FHIR. We used the server in the national eHealth system development along with data anonymization.
Data anonymization allows for removing or modifying identifiable information and using unique identifiers so the data cannot be traced to one individual. The eHealth project has been in the works since 2017 and has faced no data privacy issues, even as the Ukrainian healthcare IT infrastructure faces constant cyberattacks amidst the full-scale invasion.
Contact us to evaluate potential risks and define the best data security measures in healthcare for your project.
FAQ
How can healthcare professionals and staff contribute to better data security practices?
Regular cybersecurity training can contribute to better data security practices. Using strong passwords and following strict access control protocols prevents data leaks. Read top tips for cybersecurity in our article about the importance of data privacy in healthcare.
What steps can healthcare organizations take to detect and respond to cyber incidents effectively?
An incident response guidance should include such steps as rapid isolation of affected systems and parties, notifying relevant actors, and initiating investigations.
What role do employee training and awareness play in ensuring data security?
Employee training and awareness are crucial in ensuring data security by equipping employees with the knowledge and skills to identify and respond to potential threats.
