The sheer level of transformation that information and communication technology has had on modern society over the past fifty years is really quite astounding. In the last few decades alone, we’ve witnessed game-changing innovations in the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, digital collaboration, and analytics, all of which have reshaped modern working practices across almost every conceivable industry.
As digital technologies continue to evolve and diversify so does the challenge of protecting the information that they contain. Nowhere is this need more blatant than in the healthcare industry, where data security is a central consideration for any organisation, no matter the size, and whose work involves the sanctity of protected health information (PHI). The prevalence of cybersecurity attacks in today’s healthcare industry is worrying; a total of 37 serious healthcare breach incidents were reported to the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) or the media in the month of May 2017 alone.
When it comes to preventing the risk of unwarranted security breaches, the legal framework of data protection is laid out in both the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). These guidelines require healthcare organisations to ensure that all relevant physical and electronic security systems are in place, maintained and updated on a regular basis. Let’s take a closer look at a few key factors.
Inventory and Risk Analysis of PHI Assets
The logical first step for any organisation that is responsible for the security of protected health information is to conduct a full-scale audit of their data assets. This is the only way to identify every instance of data that needs to be protected, as well as determining a clear policy for how a company gathers, stores, shares and deletes sensitive information.
For security purposes, it is essential to determine which systems and servers are used to house PHI data; which people are responsible for maintenance and access, and the protocol that is to be followed in the event of a security breach.
Data Masking
The increasing volume and detail involved with large datasets has given rise to an unprecedented set of security challenges for healthcare organisations. One such need is the ability to prevent copies of sensitive data, particularly when the need to implement or update an entire security system arises.
Data masking “ also known as data anonymisation or de-identification “ is an essential consideration for companies that are looking to ensure a watertight approach to big data security. Data masking protects confidential data by replacing original information with fictitious data that is also realistic enough to be used for application and development testing, outsourcing, training, and business analytics. Effectively, all real data values are changed for non-production purposes, while the format remains unchanged.
Ransomware Protection
Ransomware is one of the biggest threats to the healthcare industry to have emerged in recent years. The threat was brought to national attention in the UK earlier this year with the widespread breach of NHS Trust security systems, part of a global attack that affected approximately 150 countries.
This is enough to suggest that any subsequent attack is not to be taken lightly, and that extra measures “ such as implementing procedures to guard against and detect malicious software, as well as extra staff training “ are absolutely necessary to guarantee both the short-term and long-term security of sensitive healthcare data.
In all, these are vital practices that must be implemented if any organisation is to ensure an effective company-wide data security policy. It has never been more crucial to weigh up the array of specific functionalities that are the best fit for any given context or compliance requirement, and combine their advantages to form a security policy that protects data from every possible angle.
