Cybercrime against health care has manifested as data loss, monetary theft, and attacks on medical devices and infrastructure. To find feasible solutions, organizations need to understand the interplay among threats, vulnerabilities, risks, and resilience.
What are the effective and dependable options available to ensure security against cybercrime?
I believe that cyber security and risk management in healthcare follows the same principles and technology as in other industries.
Perhaps the most important is the human factor. Awareness should be raised for healthcare professionals as to the need to safeguard information and implement well established security strategies.
I agree with Anthony Fung. It is unrealistic to assume that healthcare data is a special case that can be or even should be subject to exceptional security measures. Many of the serious breaches in healthcare data have resulted from a lack of adherence to basic security measures (for example, staff losing laptops that have large, unencrypted data files on the hard disks). Currently the weakest link in healthcare data security appears to be poor staff practices. We also need to weigh the advantages of of security versus the advantages of accessibility. Security measures that limit appropriate accessibiity may do more harm than good.
I came across a very interesting paper on cyber security and public health, which provides an overview of how cyber security issues may systemically impact public health emergency preparedness and imperil the delivery of essential public health services.
Barnett, D. J., Sell, T. K., Lord, R. K., Jenkins, C. J., Terbush, J. W., & Burke, T. A. (2013). Cyber Security Threats to Public Health. World Medical & Health Policy, 5(1), 37-46.
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