A big concern in society and the healthcare industry, which is just as likely to be a victim as any other industry, is the growing number of attacks caused by cybercrime. Healthcare costs rise because of cyberattacks and there is an increase of safety concerns for patients, not to mention the Health Insurance Probability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is violated. The effects of cybercrime can be damaging to all aspects of the healthcare industry, including but not limited to, consumers, healthcare providers, payers and pharmaceutical companies. The purpose of this research paper is to state facts about cybercrime and the effects it has on the healthcare industry, what actions can be taken for prevention, as well as my opinion on the issue.
Cybercrime Facts According to Dictionary.com (Cybercrime, n.d.), cybercrime is defined as “criminal activity or a crime that involves the Internet, computer system, or computer technology”. There are many kinds of cybercrimes, such as the spreading of computer viruses, cyberterrorism, and the stealing of someone’s identity. A computer virus is a piece of malicious programming code that is associated with an attachment. It causes a computer to act in such a way that can be detrimental for the user and is often times unnoticed. When the attachment is opened, it will spread to other computers, therefore infecting them as well (Reynolds, 2014, p. 89). Cyberterrorism is a threat made toward all types of organizations including emergency
Hospital and health facility administrators face hardened criminals who hack medical records with ever-increasing sophistication. Hackers gain access to critical information, such as medical claims, financial data, Social Security numbers and credit card data that enable identity theft, credit card fraud and other privacy breaches. One of the major security failures in the news was the CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield attack that exposed 1.1 million of its members to thefts of their personal information.[1] Combined with high-profile breaches at Anthem and Premera Blue Cross, the breach illustrates the changing role of medical administrators
According to the 2015 KPMG Healthcare Cybersecurity Survey, 81% of healthcare executives report that their “organizations have been compromised by malware, botnets or cyber attacks at least once in the past two years.”
The safeguard of patient health information and consumer information is effectively and sufficiently guarded is the upmost importance to any organization. Information security is important because it the law. Any deficiency of an effective information security program can be costly to an organization and be detrimental to patients and consumers. Organizations must be aware of the growing opportunities for breaches in security as technology is advancing is making the collection, maintenance, and dissemination of protected health information easier (Sayles, 2013). The following two security breaches will identify threats, and provide a security plan for the organization.
Numerous health care industries have been victims of cyber-attacks. Such attacks occur when an isolated device transfers the stored medical data to the hospital’s network, which could possibly takeover the entire network of the hospital and intercept data exchange between the patient and the healthcare center. For instance, wearable devices such as the (insulin) diabetes kit that determines the exact amount to be discharged into the patient’s blood, based on
With the introduction of computers and the internet opens limitless possibilities for the world to become so much more interconnected and interactive. However, that same limitless potential is both a blessing and a curse. The open internet is a system that allows for unlimited access to almost any sort of information. That same openness makes security for one’s self difficult and there isn’t anyone who is completely secure. The introduction of the internet for broad use and public consumption also came with the federal government’s attempts to prevent the theft of personal information. In the late 1990s, President Bill Clinton signed into law two provisions to protect copyright and affordability of healthcare: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. In 2011, a bill was introduced into the United States House of Representatives called the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) to combat online copyright infringement and online trafficking in counterfeit goods. Obviously the DMCA and SOPA have much more in common as they deal with copyright infringement. As such, they also have a profound impact on information security. HIPAA is important as well as it keeps confidential information like medical records to only be accessed by patients and medical professionals. All three of them touched on an important subject, information security, that warrants the
The purpose of this paper is to bring awareness to the issue of healthcare fraud and abuse. I feel that healthcare fraud and abuse is one of the biggest issues in healthcare. So, this paper will get everyone to be able to spot fraud before it happens. During, the process you will be able to identify what a person organization did that was fraud or how they abused healthcare rules. This paper will explain to you what exactly healthcare fraud and abuse is and how it affects everyone around us. Throughout this paper, we will examine 3 different articles related the healthcare fraud and abuse and provide a summary and analyze them.
The potential vulnerabilities within a Health Delivery Organizations (HDOs) are numerous. The impact of exploitation of the can be enormous. It’s not only that the information will be damaged, stolen, or misused; the actual or implied theft of improperly protected electronic data can result in extortion threats. The cost and distraction of a hacker’s extortion demand that threatens to shut down an entity’s system or to expose confidential information can be significant. In addition to the direct costs related to the extortion demand, a facility can have major expenses, including those for the required notification of patients related to the real or threatened release of their identity information. Many states require companies to notify all of their customers if a breach is even suspected. The potential for exploitation does not stop there. Consider any of the following scenarios, note that some do not even require access to personal information, a hacker just needs to get access:
This paper will discuss the various threats and vulnerabilities related to the United States healthcare system as well as government regulations and policies as well as the issues of overall personal data security as a whole. Threat assessment in regards to a cyber- attack and the level of liability in the aftermath of a cyber-attack will also be discussed. In addition to the implementation of future protocols regarding personal identifiable information to reduce the sheer number of vulnerabilities, prevent data theft as a result of future attempts at cyber-attacks.
by other specialty clinic or physician, in a mouse click. Moreover, many big health care organizations incorporated a secure online portal for the patients to access their test results, and it eliminated the hassle of a revisit to the hospital and proved to be cost effective for the patient. So the problem lies with how efficiently people manage the data. And many in health industry instead of seeing the big opportunity, they point fingers at the extra burden and challenge of Implementing cyber security. Hansen said. “It can’t be seen just as, ‘Oh this is such a burden”. Hence the need of the hour is adequate and sufficient training to the staff who deal with this sensitive patient data and make them aware of how important to protect the data and consequences of data breaches. Because the healthcare consumers, in the event of data breach and identity theft, they often end up suing the
Cyber Crime is described as criminal activity committed via use of electronic communications with respect to cyber fraud or identity theft through phishing and spoofing. There are many other forms of cyber-crime also such as harassment, pornography etc. via use of information technology.
Throughout the year 2014 through 2015 many technology changes occurred to reduce the threat of healthcare fraud. Statistics show that healthcare fraud abuse laws help control cheating the system in the healthcare field. In 2014 68 billion dollars were spent on healthcare fraud, estimated by the national healthcare anti-fraud association. Others estimated that the cost could reach as much as 10 percent or 230 billion of the 2.27 trillion spent on healthcare fraud in 2015. With this coming to light to the health care administration and the U.S government. Healthcare fraud and abuse programs have been put in place to cut down this costly threat.
It is critical now more than ever, due to the lack sufficient security, to protect patient data in the healthcare industry. Therefore, in order to accomplish this goal, investigation into the possible causes of inadequate security as well as the other causes of healthcare breaches and cyber-threats must be explored. Without this analysis, patient data will continue to be compromised, which will cause devastating damage to both patients and healthcare organizations. From the extensive research on the outbreak of healthcare data breaches, the major factors that contribute to the increase of this issue were discovered. By thorough analysis of these factors, useful solutions will be developed to decrease the compromise of patient data as well as healthcare organizations implementing better security measures.
Cyberterrorism is generally understood to refer to highly damaging computer-based attacks or threats of attack by non-state actors against
You can add some more extra layers of security to your e-commerce site and the applications such as contact forms, login boxes and search query. These steps will ensure that your e-commerce site is protected from application-level attacks like SQL injections and XSS (Cross-site Scripting)
We chose to examine the right to privacy. Under this human right, nobody is allowed to invade your personal space. An individual is prohibited entry to your home, your personal documents, or become a bothersome to you and your family without you giving them your proper consent. Most importantly, nobody should inflict harm towards your reputation. The issue of cybercrime and home burglaries is in relation to the human privacy right.