Many have been asking lately if the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights has been effective in carrying out its HIPAA enforcement role. The question is a fair one.
Best practices for protecting medical devices are sorely lacking. That's why it's excellent news that a new consortium is attempting to devise some best practices for keeping medical devices secure.
The recent data breaches at Epsilon and Sony should send a chilling message to privacy officers everywhere. "You can't prepare enough," says Kirk Herath, chief privacy officer of Nationwide Insurance Companies.
Kirk Herath, Chief Privacy Officer at Nationwide Insurance Companies, has been in privacy management for more than a decade, and he has two main concerns about today's enterprise: Mobile technology and cloud computing.
The federal list of major healthcare information breaches that have occurred since September 2009 didn't grow much in the past month. The list now includes 272 cases affecting a total of almost 10.9 million individuals.
The Obama administration's plan for a federal data breach notification policy is too vague to be effective, and it lacks teeth to penalize violators, according to experts who raise open questions about the proposal.
More than 30,000 enrollees in a Medicare supplementary insurance plan from Anthem Blue Cross are being offered free credit monitoring services after they were mailed notices that apparently displayed their Social Security numbers in the envelope window.
Kazuo Hirai, a top Sony executives, says the company is applying advanced security technology, increasing levels of encryption, adding firewalls and implementing early warning systems to detect attacks on network.
Regulatory compliance expert Harry Rhodes says it's essential to have a formal process in place for objectively assessing whether a security incident needs to be reported as a breach.
Lacking technology is not the problem, says attorney Lucy Thomson. It's that today's technology is not being adequately used to fight modern cybersecurity threats.
"Raising the security awareness of your workforce is your best defense against having a breach incident," says David Holtzman, who's on the federal team that enforces the HITECH Act breach notification rule.
Our website uses cookies. Cookies enable us to provide the best experience possible and help us understand how visitors use our website. By browsing healthcareinfosecurity.com, you agree to our use of cookies.