Protecting Healthcare Records from Cyberattacks

In the first 4 months of 2015, 99 million healthcare records had been compromised in 93 different attacks of data breaches; and, recent estimates have shown that half of all healthcare organizations have been attacked in the past year, causing up to $6 billion in costs and damages.

As electronic health records increasingly grow more important in the healthcare environment, so too does cybersecurity.

“The risk of cyberattacks is no longer limited to the IT desk—it is a key business issue that must be addressed by executive leadership teams in order to build that ‘culture of prevention,’” Devin Jopp, EdD, president and CEO of the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI), said in a statement.

WEDI announced the development of a primer on cybersecurity, known as Perspectives on Cybersecurity in Healthcare. The report addressed some of the challenges healthcare organizations face in defending themselves from cyberattacks as well as some of the ways in which these attacks occur. The authors suggest that organizations can more proactively and effectively defend themselves by employing a comprehensive threat intelligence strategy.

“No healthcare organization can be completely immune from cyberattacks and adversaries,” the authors wrote. “However, they can take appropriate measures to erect defenses and integrate cybersecurity into the business environment and culture.”

View the full report at the WEDI website: http://bit.ly/1GD5O7F