IT Security In Health Care Essay

Health information is a fundamental piece of data which represents a person, business, organization, or a community. This data is vital in monitoring and coordination of care for individuals and communities. It not only monitors and coordinates patient care, but reduces costly mistakes and prevent duplication of treatments as well as taking a pivotal role in preserving, securing, and protecting personal health information. Since, this information is extremely essential and sensitive, it must remain secure and safe to prevent frauds and cyber-attacks. First of all, this paper discusses vitality of the health information in regards to individuals, professionals, and organizations along with its benefits to improve overall quality of life. Secondly, it discusses the role of information technology in various aspects of the industry and the what the future holds within IT.

To remain in compliance with HIPPA and HITECH, security planning is essential for data backup and recovery. Assessing risks to determine the potential downfalls of any health information system is essential. Once those risks are identified, policies and procedures can be created, as well as implemented and enforced to ensure a safety culture. For examples, an organization will have a policy on the appropriated downtime procedure at their facility. This policy will ensure adequate details on the proper procedures, ensuring staff feel confident. By performing downtime procedures, the organization is staying compliant with regulations and ensuring a safe and easy data backup and recovery plan (Hawkins, 2013).

Discuss security standards and methods, including the need for data storage integrity and data backup and recovery. In addition to complying with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA), SMC needs to be valiant in how the organization will protect information and manage network security. Information security is the protection of information against risk to its integrity, inadvertent disclosure, or availability (Hawkins, 2013a). The most common threats an organization's network will face are hackers, spyware, viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and malicious insider (Hawkins, 2013a). To protect SMC from hackers, they will use firewalls and intrusion-detection devices. Firewalls protect network systems by obstructing unauthorized entry while allowing approved communications (Hawkins, 2013a). Intrusion-detection systems monitor who the user is and what the user accesses. To promote HIPPA, SMC will track the last names of users who accessed patients with the same last name to reveal inappropriate use of client information.

Automation and interconnections with information in their healthcare environments need increasing support, security measures need to be implemented without disrupting the workflow of approved users, costs associated with data breaches and damage to their reputation need to be avoided. IT budgets constraints also impose limitations in many healthcare institutions. Compliance with security and privacy related regulations in healthcare and making sure what policies and standards should be implemented requires solutions that clearly address security challenges so that they can be integrated into a healthcare institution’s existing infrastructure and business practice. As data is transmitted across countless environments and is stored on an ever-expanding grouping of endpoint and storage devices such as computers, laptops, and removable storage devices, it will become evident that there will be a need for strong encryption. Under the HITECH Act and comparable state laws, encrypted data that is received or acquired by unauthorized persons through a lost or stolen electronic device or an errant email, is typically not considered a breach. However, healthcare institutions need to determine the level of encryption they should adopt. For example, a hospital could decide where there is the greatest risk of information loss (patient data in email messages or on storage drive) that is not on internal

In a large service-related Healthcare organization with the staff to patient ratio approximately 1:100, there is a greater threat by technology of breaching security records. Medical records include information about ones physical and mental being. They may contain information about ones relationship with family members, sexual behavior, drug or alcohol problems and HIV status ( Burke & Weill, 2005). The confidentiality is threatened when the medical records information is put on the Internet, by use of telemedicine, and by the use of e-mail by healthcare workers. Although this is the fastest way to store and share

The following risks, threats, and vulnerabilities were found in a healthcare IT infrastructure servicing patients with life-threatening situations. Given the list, select which of the seven domains of a typical

Some include administrative, physical and technical safeguards. In administrative safeguards it allows the reader to understand the security management process to reduce risk and vulnerabilities. Security personnel responsible for developing and implementing security policies. Information access management minimum access to perform duties. Physical safeguard is about the limit of physical access to facilities, and how workstation and device security policies and procedure covering transfer, removal, disposal, and reuse of electronic media. Finally, technical safeguard is about the access control that restricts access to authorized personnel’s. Audit controls for hardware, software, and transitions. Integrity controls to ensure data is not altered or destroyed. Transmissions security to protect against un authorized access to data transmitted on network and via email. Moreover, there are three pillars of data security confidentiality, availability, and integrity. Confidentiality refers to the prevention of data loss, and is the category most easily identified with HIPAA privacy and security within healthcare environments. Usernames, passwords, and encryption are common measures implemented to ensure confidentiality. Availability refers to system and network accessibility, and often focuses on power loss or network connectivity outages. Integrity describes the trustworthiness and permanence of data, an assurance that the lab results or personal medical history of a patient is not modifiable by unauthorized entities or corrupted by a poorly designed process. Database best practices, data loss solutions, and data backup and archival tools are implemented to prevent data manipulation, corruption, or loss; thereby maintaining the integrity of patient

Under the HIPAA Security Rule, health care providers are required to conduct an accurate and thorough analysis of the potential risks and vulnerabilities. Protecting the confidentiality, integrity, availability, and privacy of data in health care is very important. For a risk analysis, health care providers would prioritize risks based on the severity of the impact that it would cause their patients and practices (Security Risk Analysis TipSheet, 2014). In addition, identifying the potential threats to patient privacy and security (Security Risk Analysis TipSheet, 2014). A risk analysis process would include determining the likelihood and impact of potential risk to electronic protected health information, implementing security measures to

Health Body Wellness Centre (HBWC) is a health facility that sponsors and encourages medical evaluation, research and dissemination of information among health care experts. At HBWC, the department of Office Grants Giveaway is mandated with to distribute medical grants that are supported by the federal government. The Office of Grants and Giveaways achieves the process of medical funding circulation using Microsoft Access database system that is normally referred to as the Small Hospital Tracking Systems (SHGTS). A risk assessment of a small hospital tracking system was carried out to

As an information security officer for a small pharmacy there are a few things that need to be addressed. As with all companies it is top priority to make sure that the data that is input into the machines stays safe and to make sure that the people using the computers know it is their responsibility as well. As a security officer my supervisor has asked me to identify any inherent risks associated with the pharmacy and establish any physical and logical access control methods that will mitigate the risks identified.

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.

Information security and privacy is occupying a most important role in the healthcare territory in order to deliver protected information process to their patients (Appari, & Johnson, 2010). As healthcare department is the organization with vast data and essential information the hospitals has to keep a useful information security technique in their enterprise process (Mishra et al., 2011). Information security is one such phase in the healthcare sphere which is extremely problematic to describe and evaluate even to the individuals who are working on the process. In the healthcare organization, information is of many types which required for the work and even the security is a main control for almost all the practices which are transmitted out in the healthcare field (Appari, & Johnson, 2010). Hospitals, in specific, have been instructed to create a new set of security specialists to protect healthcare data tools techniques upon which exists may rely. Healthcare data is very critical for patients because it is very confidential records. If a medical apparatus is filled with a computer virus it can even exemplify a possibility to patients ' lives. Hence, hospitals should design alertness of the risk, to defend against concerns to healthcare databanks and be concerned about the high risk of infected computers or medical tools being connected to their networks (Mishra et al., 2011).

The rapid changes in technology over the past few decades has left the healthcare industry ill-prepared to operate in today’s environment. Most substantial protections of sensitive consumer information has come as a result of federal regulation, most notably in 1996 with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and 2009 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Protection of information in the healthcare industry has lagged behind all other industries, perhaps because the records aren’t financial in nature or sensitive government information. Implementing simple steps for many organizations may be enough to limit the vast majority of breaches, although a layered, comprehensive security approach should be the ultimate goal for companies.

The reader will become familiarised with the term risk and it definitions from specifically the ISO 31000 standard of risk management and also the definition of risk from the criminology crime triangle. Which one of these two definitions that are the most suitable for usage within the security industry will be discussed and evaluated. How and why consequence is important when assessing risk priorities and determining where to allocate resources will be examined and answered.

A threat agent is the facilitator of an attack however; a threat is a constant danger to an asset.