Technical Risk Mitigation

Best practices in applying security standards

A risk-based approach to IT security focuses efforts on the technical controls that are most appropriate, based on the risks the organization is exposed to. This approach depends on existing standards to provide flexible, scalable, and cost-effective techniques that improve healthcare organizations’ security posture over time.

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TECHNICAL SECURITY CHALLENGES FOR HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS

The 2019 American Medical Collection Agency (AMCA) breach exemplifies many of the technical challenges that healthcare providers face today.

With a billing vendor of the major lab companies for the entire industry at fault, the breach affects nearly every provider’s patient population, and monitoring for losses is insufficient. While that is just one event, healthcare data breaches cost the industry about $4 billion in 2019, and that number was expected to increase in 2020. The ever-growing volume of valuable online personal health information (PHI) creates an increasingly attractive target for hackers.