News Insights: October 2019 Healthcare Data Breach Report

News Insights:

Javvad Malik, Security Awareness Advocate, KnowBe4:

“Healthcare information is some of the most sensitive of personal information. While it is important to have healthcare information readily available to medical professionals, care needs to be taken that the information is not made available to criminals trying to gain access. It’s not that there is a lack of data protection tools and procedures. Encryption, multi-factor authentication, data access models and such all exist. What we have is more of a lack of willingness, or awareness to implement strong data protection controls, in some cases for good reason. But broadly speaking this is a cultural issue, where medical institutes by and large do not consider security requirements, and do not drill in security through every role. Until we see cyber security being embedded into the culture of healthcare organisations in the same way that we try to combat the spread of germs with constant reminders and availability of anti-bacterial hand wash, we will continue to see breaches occur.”