Did you know that 2.7 million Americans were affected from around 32 major health information breach incidents recently? The bulk of the people were affected by the information breach that occurred with the Insurer Health Net and its business associate IBM. The Federal list released on June 22nd lists all the major healthcare information breaches [...]

As per the 2011 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) released by Verizon there has been a considerable drop in the number of compromised records- from 361 million in 2008 to 144 million in 2009 and less than 4 million in 2010. Security breach incidents have reduced to 1% in the healthcare sector while the hospitality [...]

The media is abuzz with news of data breaches especially with websites like the Health and Human Services (HHS) tracking them. As per the Office of Civil Rights, there were close to 9,109 data breaches by Sept 2010, averaging 25 data breaches per day! The HSS had earlier issued a given set of regulations to [...]

A recent incident of HIPAA violation has reinforced the need for health care organizations to focus on creating and keeping the records efficiently for easy access; most do not create the records in the first place!  If they have not, the  tendency has been to subdue their responsibilities towards enforcement of security compliance measures with [...]

It is a strangely paradoxical situation that despite revised and stricter compliance regulations the number of security breaches seems to rise. The HIPAA mandate was enforced to tone down risks threatening patients’ personal records. But there has hardly been any positive report of effective progress towards a threat free environment.
As per a recent study conducted [...]

In 2005, when HIPAA Compliant came into effect, healthcare organizations were required to mitigate risks by conducting periodic risk assessment. But until recently a significant number of healthcare entities did not put this into practice. According to a recent survey 14 percent of hospitals and 33 percent of clinics were yet to conduct their first [...]

According to industry experts, 2011 is the year when IT firms will realize that expensive risk management and compliance solutions may not provide the desired levels of security. Integration and alignment of disparate compliance initiatives for enhanced security controls will therefore assume immense importance. Chris Mclean, Forrester research analyst, in his report Governance, Risk and [...]

The technological implications of the Federal Health Care Reform are now becoming obvious, and states are beginning to confront the burden of implementing these changes. While extending health insurance to an additional 32 million Americans presents great opportunities for the state government, it also brings with it, big risks. And these risks are mainly associated [...]

According to GartnerG2 (now Gartner Industry Advisory Services) a research unit of Gartner, 90% of cyber attacks leverage known security flaws and vulnerabilities, for which patches are already available. Gartner analysts also believe that several security attacks could have been avoided if organizations had focused more on vulnerability management efforts.
Effective vulnerability management is therefore a [...]

Privacy protection is a growing concern for organizations despite stringent laws governing data security. Medical institutions especially are experiencing challenges in safeguarding patient information. A number of data breaches have been reported in the HIPAA healthcare industry so far. And the most recent addition to this is six hospitals and a nursing home being fined [...]