Information Technology : An Target Of Choice By Cyber Criminals And Hackers

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

Security breaches of EMRs vary from someone without consent viewing the patient’s information, to a hacker using the information to steal one’s identity. According to Privacy Rights Clearing House, more than 260 million data breaches have occurred in the United States, including those of health related records. Approximately 12 percent of data breaches involve medical organizations (Gellman, 2012). According to Redspin, a provider of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act risk analysis and IT security assessment services, more than 6 million individual’s health records were compromised during a period from August 2009 and December 2010 (Author Unknown, 2010). A provision of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act requires all breaches affecting 500 or more people to be reported to the Department of Health and Human Services. This reporting is to be accomplished within 60 days of discovery. The Redspin report covering the period above involved 225 breaches of protected health information. The amount of people with access to an individual’s health record creates concern with confidentiality. According to the Los Angeles

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

Medical data contains some of the most sensitive information about a person, and because of its permanency, meaning it cannot be changed like canceling and replacing credit information, it is extremely valuable. This source of information makes the healthcare industry a prime target for cybercriminals. According to the Intel Security report, hackers are no longer just stealing medical data and selling it, they are extorting their victims (Landi, H., 2016). In one such case, a hacker stole more than 650,000 medical records from three separate healthcare institution databases. Then preceded to publicly advertised the records for sale in the dark web marketplace. After claiming to sell 100,000 in records, the hacker tried to extort money

I believe the industry has their work cut out for them, as the challenges are numerous, with privacy, confidentiality and the totality of security issues and concerns tipping the scale. I agree with the commentary being an immense undertaking with a lot of questions to be answered and I also believe reducing access, increases security. However, the changes in healthcare in concert with IT modifications are mammoth undertakings even without security, patient access and the “virtual visits” in the picture creating additional concerns. On the other hand, the opposing position is to keep the status quo, and to not allow access or have any virtual visits to occur. Hacking is a concern and has increased Revelations in the 2015 Study on Privacy and Security of Healthcare Data found that no healthcare organization, regardless of the size, is exempt from a data breach. The outcomes in this report revealed 91 percent of healthcare organizations had a breach in the last two years and 40 percent had more than five, medical identity thefts have increased from 1.4 million to 2.3 million victims (Weisbaum, 2015, n.p.). This information reveals the immense patient safety, privacy and confidentiality task in front of Fierce Health IT and many other IT boards across this nation. The impact it would have on my practice is ensuring the patients I come in contact with understands what they are signing, the changes that take place and how they affect them and steps the can take make their safety and privacy more secure. This creates additional learning and understanding for myself as a patient and for my

With so many health facilities turning to electronic systems as a way to deal with personally identifiable information and to more efficiently run their practices, there can be opportunities for cyber thieves to hijack personal information. Luckily, the OIG has stepped in to identify where a majority of these cyber weaknesses frequently can be determined to be.

Hospitals are increasing the use of networking through computer systems and devices to easily access electronic health records, medical imaging, asset tracking, communications, vendor software-as-a- service solution, and patient monitoring. It has become an integral part to the lives of medical staff and patients everywhere. With the use of networking in the hospital, it’s becoming a challenge to protect the privacy of patients’ health records and securing electronic data since its vulnerability to a wide variety of security threats. According to a 2017 Cybersecurity news article, healthcare cybersecurity attacks rise 320% from 2015-2016, making the healthcare industry suffer the most cyberattacks that are happening. (1)

With the ability to store our medical records electronically, there will always be the risk and exposure of some our most personal information to hackers and thieves. There have been numerous reports lately of groups such as “Anonymous” breaking into the CIA, shutting down the FBI’s websites and even breaking into state databases for profit and gain.

The health care industry and businesses is always being targeted by cyberthreats at an increasingly alarming rate. Breaches and malicious attacks like financial and retail, health care is no longer on the sidelines and considered one of the five top security breaches. The most recent breach is an ongoing issue with healthcare timely reporting the beach within the 60 days’ time frame. A cyberattack on April 6, 2017 on the IRS revealed that up to 100,000 taxpayers may have had their personal information stolen in a scheme involving the IRS Data Retrieval Tool. The criminals obtain access to the IRS from a system named “Get Transcript” this system allowed the criminals to use information they obtain from the previous years they had about the

One of the most pressing threats to Information Security Officers and everyone involved in the security field is the exploitation of ones’ email system. Since almost everyone on a network utilizes this service and a lot of the vulnerability comes from the individual end user, the threat is quite expansive. One of the main ways email systems are compromised and lead to data leakages are user’s susceptibility to falling victim to phishing attacks which then introduce malware to a system. According to APWG’s report, “’Business email compromise’ (or BEC) scams became a major problem in 2015” and sites associated with phishing have risen to as high as 88,976 as of August 2015.[1] In addition, in a survey of hundreds of information security professionals, 85% reported being the victim of a phishing attack, where emails personalized with first names, or last names, had 19% and 17% higher click rates, respectively, than those without personalization.[5] To get a better picture of just how vulnerable companies are to this threat, back in December of 2015, JPMorgan, after recently falling victim to a breach of their own, was able to convince 20% of its own staff to open a fake phishing email as part of an internal security vulnerability assessment.[2] Predicted annual costs of phishing have been estimated to range from $208,174 when malware is contained in an email, $1,020,705 when credential compromises are not contained

It is important to understand that the healthcare industry has only become digitized in the past 10 to 15 years, therefore most organizations are not prepared and find themselves behind the curve from a cybersecurity readiness perspective. The Healthcare industry is a prime target for adversaries (cyber criminals, hacktivist and nation states) because of the highly sought after data it possesses, robbers rob banks because that is where the money is, to put it in simple terms.

Health Informatics has been around for ages, but over the pass ten plus years the profession has increased with higher demand. Health informatics is one of the nation’s largest growth industries. Health informatics have grown as a discipline with specialization in areas within the health profession. This field of study incorporates procedure, theories and concepts from computer information science. As the medical profession increases, so do the health data security and privacy has become a major growing concern. The main concern is protecting the privacy of medical patient information. Over the past few years there have been numerous medical information breaches, either by hackers or employees. Meanwhile, companies are being faced with

In our growing global world companies rely heavily on their IT infrastructure to accomplish critical business functions. To effectively compete in a fast-paced, multifaceted, global economy, organizations are employing new technologies at an unprecedented rate. In most cases, either ignoring or not fully understanding the increased exposure to their business. The difficulty’s facing organizations today in this global market is how they will protect new technology systems from cyber criminals.

Computers suffer attacks, both at home and business atmosphere and they have develop steadily over the past twenty years. Based on the U. S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), “…worldwide digital attacks reached an all-time high of nearly 20,000 in January, causing more than $8 billion in damages.” (Mueller, 2003). Events and occurrences on identity theft which is the act of impersonating another person for profit or gain – are increasing and growing crimes in the United States, affecting around 900,000 new victims every year (Pollock & May, 2002). Personal information need valuable and exceptional security and should be possible to increment the effective security program which requires important research, and usually is a great investment in time and resources. Hackers, the cyber-criminals would seek any opportunity by creating new viruses and sneaking and shuffling their way through anyone’s computer in our nation.

Their operations are very slick and swift such that stolen data is quickly exploited within seconds of being submitted by unsuspecting victims. Since 2005, over 400,000 databases have been compromised since 2005, and thousands more have gone unnoticed or reported. About 40 percent of those involved in IT security have no fixed figure on the number of hackings their companies have experienced. One of the rapidly increasing areas of ecommerce is in the use of web-based applications to replace traditional over-the counter transactions. Hackers have expectedly, latched on. According to a study by Gartner, over 75 percent of Internet security breaches are due to flaws and loop holes in software. The reason for this is that, applications are normally designed and put together quickly to get the system running, and no time is spend analyzing and assessing security implications. As computer hackers continue to step up their operations in line with technology advancements, the securities and future industry recorded a 150 percent increase in the number of suspicious activities detected by their systems. During the same time, research carried out at the University of Maryland indicated that a computer connected to the Internet was subject to an attempted hack every 40 seconds. The battle between ecommerce websites and consumers wages on, according to an independent analyst, ‘consumers are losing a tug of war.’ Simon Smelt, an economist who runs a survey company