Testing IT Risks in Healthcare IT Systems

 

Testing IT Risks in Healthcare IT Systems

Not a day goes by without news and reports around cyber-attacks. High-profile, high-impact cyber breaches are becoming common. IDC’s Health Insights group predicts that 1 in 3 health care recipients will be the victim of a health care data breach in 2016. Healthcare providers (including insurance providers) must encrypt personal information. A cyber breach can cause financial losses and more serious damage to the parties breached in the process than ever before. The repository of information saved in the healthcare industry database is supposed to be sensitive, private and confidential.

In a healthcare setting a reasonably practical IT Security strategy to eliminate all possible cyber security risks is not usually possible. Given the extent of access required by various clinical and lab, the staff keeps changing, dynamics of the IAM framework in a healthcare setting are quite different. In addition to the brick and mortar, IT fixes – to discover and close any possible loopholes. Keeping this in perspective, a smart and very simple risk assessment strategy safeguard a possible attack into the system. Risks in cyberspace (IT Security aspect) in hybrid healthcare IT System emerges from users, devices, applications and IT connections. Depending on the load on threat points, each organization has a different set of challenges while coming up with an IT System that is 100% foolproof.

On top of IT Security considerations there are some areas that healthcare organizations need to pay heed that strengthen the reasons to perform IT security risk assessment:

  • Making Investment Assessment – Added technical capabilities usually involve a need assessment and matching it with investment grants.
  • Bringing Work Productivity – IT Security technology has...

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