by Jasmine Chennikara-Varghese
The health care industry has been aggressively using their resources to implement and leverage enabling technologies for health management. As the healthcare sector technology evolves, it is encompassing clinics and doctor’s offices, Internet-based consulting with remote healthcare providers and connected medical devices spanning multi-cloud IaaS and SaaS environments. The proliferation of healthcare endpoints and health IT systems means a larger cyber attack surface for malicious actors to exploit.
Due to the sensitive nature of personal health information, data breaches of such records can mean exposure of social security numbers, credit cards and medical insurance. LabCorp recently disclosed that it may have experienced a data breach in mid-July 2018 that put health records of millions of patients at risk. In response to the potential incident, LabCorp shut down all IT systems, severely impacting patients, doctors and vendors for several days. In late 2017, a cyber attack on Medicaid in Florida exposed sensitive information for 30,000 patients. The data breach was a result of an employee falling prey to a malicious “phishing” email. In this case, the attackers may have accessed Social Security numbers, patient names, addresses, medical information, birth dates, and other information.
The Verizon 2018 Protected Health Information Data Breach Report highlights that the healthcare industry’s biggest threat was from people inside companies, not external attackers. The drivers for insider threats were financial gain, such as tax fraud or opening lines of credit with stolen information (48%), fun or curiosity in looking up the personal records of celebrities or family members (31%), or simply convenience (10 percent).
Some measures can be taken to secure and restrict the access of healthcare professionals to sensitive data but without complete access to health records, most cannot perform their jobs in a timely manner. The high level of access of a typical healthcare system user makes them a point of vulnerability and an attractive target for attackers. To better protect health data, user activities on personal health information (PHI) should be monitored. With Pathlock Application Security Monitoring, personal health data is continuously monitored for complete visibility into user actions. Pathlock detects suspicious activities and anomalies, alerting on indicators of potential malicious events such as activity on health data at unusual hours or from an unexpected IP address.
Learn how Pathlock Application Security Monitoring can help you detect the inside threat actors and compromised users, who intentionally or inadvertently, put your health data at risk.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.