Purpose Statement
The creation go of the Internet has helped spawn new forms of criminals and crimes, and has always helped make older criminal schemes easier to execute, identity theft, child pornography, copyright violations, hacking and you could go on and on. In a 2003 survey conducted by the CSI with the participation of the San Francisco Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Computer Intrusion Squad, of the 530 respondents made up of U.S. corporations, government agencies, financial institutions, medical institutions and universities, 56% reported unauthorized use of their computer systems (2003 CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey).
Laws have always and will always be behind criminal acts, and new laws are put in place to tackle
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(http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/srsummary.html)
The health industry has become the most attractive targets for cyber criminals, because of the large volumes of protected health, personals, and financial data that are retained. Therefore, it is no surprise that they have become such a popular target among cyber criminal organizations. Cybercriminals utilizes various methods to obtain the information they are seeking from both medical insurance and health industry corporations.
These methods include:
• Insider threats stealing patient records and other sensitive information while working for a company that maintains these types of records.
• Using old criminal tactics such as bribing or threatening physical harm to employee with access to records.
• Hackers breaking into record data bases, utilizing malware to steal email, dumpster diving, and skimming data from various storage devices.
• Social engineering techniques, such as posing as a legitimate employee, or business to request certain data.
The greatest threat to the health industry when it comes to loss of patient data is the insider threat, a current or former employee who has access to sensitive information, and a reason to utilize this privileged access for criminal intent. In April 2002, Christopher Scott Sandusky pled guilty to
Health Care Company (HCC) like any other health care organization must comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which sets the standard for protecting sensitive patient data. Upon learning, that HCC database administrator received a strange email from the Human Resources (HR), that could be infected, the cyber security company, XYZ, Inc. has been hired to investigate a potential security breach of their medical system. As the lead forensics investigator for XYZ, Inc., I have established a work plan that incorporates requirements set forth by the Federal Rules of Evidence.
In the health care business, there are certain standards and laws that have been put in place to protect our patients and their personal health information. When a health care facility fails to protect their patient’s confidential information, the US Government may get involved and facilities may be forced to pay huge sums of money in fines, and risk damaging their reputation.
ranging from skimming to hacking into some ones iCloud. We will also be giving examples of to
Deliberately falsifying medical information with the hope of receiving greater benefits/money is an easier way to describe health care fraud. Although many believe these acts are commonly performed by individuals, healthcare providers, staff, and insurance companies are increasingly involved in these crimes as well. When looking at the effects of healthcare fraud, losing money is not the only substantial threat. According to Health Research Finding.org, patient identity theft is also on the rise due to healthcare organizations offering the lowest cyber security involving private patient information (Quiggle). Although all medical providers, insurance carriers, clearing houses, and any other organizations handling private healthcare information must abide by HIPAA security laws, the use
HIPPA and Data Breaches has been one of the most common today. Breach is defined as unauthorized persons that gain access/use or disclosure of protected health information which have been compromised thru security or privacy of such information. HIPPA Breaches of electronic data have become a major problem for information being traded between networks such as interoperability of systems. Laptop and Desktop theft has been the ultimate way patient’s information been expose to people who shouldn’t have access to records or/ do not have any relevance for their job. However there always seem to be a common perpetrator (worker) who just loves to stick their nose into folk’s business then spread rumors that may or may not be true.The legal risk will
One of the ways that patient information can be used illegally is through organized crime and gangs. This type of crime is rising tremendously. They are stealing patient names, addresses, social security numbers, birth dates and using it to steal identities. The credit card information can also be obtained this way.
Though this discussion is not as much about the medical community as it is the morality and confidentiality, I currently work per diem as a RN at a facility that audits user information and access routinely. Upon hire, I was told that in the year 2014 alone, 9 employees were fired for unauthorized access of medical records. Recently, my community has had many high profile cases, where both the victims and the accused have received medical care. Care received by these individuals have been accessed by individuals that have no use for it- not providing direct care. This is a real problem in the healthcare field, and those without the "need to know", but have access to information are inappropriately viewing this information. Curiosity , ignorance
This paper will address the importance of Medical Identity Theft. The crime of medical identity theft is a growing concern in healthcare institutions. Medical thievery, is a specific variation of stealing, and is still relatively unknown to the full general world, but it may also be the most dangerous form of identity theft.
In the article “Anthem Inc. Reeling After Behemoth 80M-Record HIPAA Breach,”2016, With healthcare organizations presenting the ability for a patient to check on their medical records online that valuable information is a huge target for cyberattacks. Medical information and records are very profitable for cyberattacks on the healthcare industry. One major cyberattack on the healthcare industry was directed toward Anthem. The nation’s second largest healthcare insurance provider was hacked in February 2015. This cyber attack stole 80 million records exposing the names, addresses, social security numbers, medical ID and, income data. From what information Anthem could share they stated that the information taken could be used for identity theft
A hacker downloads thousands of medical records from the University of Washington Medical School [1]. Eli Lilly and Co. accidentally discloses the email addresses of 6000 patients who are taking Prozac [2]. With these incidents fresh in the minds of many people, the privacy of medical information has been a hot topic. It has joined other issues such as the
These individual were four community professionals with medical access at the hospital, medical assistant, an intern research student. Nevertheless, the community doctors have access to all electronic records but only usage is to view information related to a patient’s care. The doctors provided their logon and passcodes to other employees in the hospital to use. Which considerably is an offense toward hospital policies. Also, the student with temporary access viewed patient’s records that require high level access. According to David Blake, the privacy officer stated the there is a “High level of security” along with good privacy policies. In fact, they decided to bump up security restricting the access to information and limiting the direct access to certain patients. Also, being aware of privileges and performing audits they can keeps up with who accessed classified medical
As a new employee, Larry has inherited quite an IT mess. There are many concerning aspects to the problems Larry must address, but first and foremost, is the Patient information leaks must be of top priority. There are any number of ways patient information can be leaked and this organization appears to be suffering from some of them. Let’s look at a few areas.
At the Lung Institute, we make it our business to safeguard our patients’ personal data. All employees who handle patient information are held to a high standard when it comes to information security. It’s wise to be vigilant of how your personal physician’s staff handles sensitive information. When hackers steal personal information, it can result in identity theft, a crime in which the criminal can pose as an individual by using the victim’s personal information online. Although the responsible professionals of the Lung Institute medical records staff make a supreme effort to protect customers’ and employees’ vital information, they can’t control what happens outside the Lung Institute offices. That’s why we’re offering these Lung Institute
It was reported in an incident that happened late last year when an employee who was not authorized to have access to patients medical records and was not involve with the care of patients to have inappropriately access the medical records and social security numbers of 1,300 patients. Patients become vulnerable when their private information is exposed as it provided details of their personal life and could also leads to identity theft and patients safety concerns. When making decision it is important to know how to handle any situation and make the right choices in knowing what kind of patient information can be shared and who to release it to. Mistakes could possible been made when health employee misplaces medical records either by entering
Susan W. Brenner’s Cybercrime: Criminal Threats from Cyberspace is scary, exciting, and informative all in one book. It takes you on rollercoaster from start to finish as your eyes are opened to the realities of cybercrime and cybercriminals’ capabilities as our technologies have progressed. Brenner’s book is an excellent piece for those that are not savvy about technology terminology and cybercrime.