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 [...]

A recent federal list announced that there have been serious health information breaches that affected nearly 8.3 million people since September 2009. With 3 government agencies looking into Heath Net breaches including the case of 9 missing server drives from a California data center that was managed by IBM, the actual gravity of the situation [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The present IT environment is complex in nature, and much more than a handful of technical people operating and controlling systems with a few virus prevention tools. The complexity has increased manifold with a growing number of security threats being identified everyday. The security of confidential data is under question with potential risks from malicious [...]

According to market analyst firm IDC, file data accounts for nearly 80% of business data and has been growing at a rate of 60% every year. With such overwhelming growth in the volume of sensitive data files, persistent insider threats and complex regulatory mandates for data protection, there is immense pressure on organizations to secure [...]

Gone are the days when hackers attacked perimeter defences. Today their objective is to take control of confidential data and the applications which process them. Hacking is now an operation involving global coordination, sophisticated techniques and persistent teamwork. And with clear roles and responsibilities being defined in the community, hacking is now a highly organized, [...]

Computer-based criminal activity is not a new trend. It has been prevalent for several years. However, we cannot deny the fact that illegal activities such as data theft and misuse have become far more pervasive in the recent years. And in most cases backup data seem to be the main target of cyber criminals. There [...]