Electronic Health Reporter

Healthcare data hacking has started occurring pretty often nowadays and most people are not even aware that their data has been stolen. Healthcare organizations are not built in a way they can identify illegal records; hence, they are unable to eliminate them.

The main problem is that people are not aware of healthcare data breach until they are sick and need treatment, which makes it the worst time to deal with problems like this. Breaching of healthcare data leads to losing insurance coverage, mixed up records, wrong diagnosis, medical harm, etc.

Thus, how do you prevent this from happening? Here are here to share some tips that will help you avoid healthcare data hacking.

5 Tips to avoid healthcare data hacking

1.   Lexington Law. Healthcare data theft, along with Identity theft, has become a huge problem in today’s world. In order to stay protected from these things, hiring services like Lexington law can be extremely helpful.

They provide things like free credit report evaluation and attractive discounts for couples, families and active military personnel along with protecting your health care data and identity. You can go over to websites, like Crediful, to read a review about Lexington law before buying.

2.   Do a risk assessment test. In 2003, a rule was passed by HIPAA which stated that healthcare organizations were required to take a risk assessment test. However, there was no penalty if not done, so most organizations did not do it.

Then the HITECH Act passed and it changed the law by making security risk analysis mandatory. Performing security analysis helps in identifying vulnerabilities in the security systems and identifying threats.

3.   Always keep software up to date. Most people neglect software updates as they are busy and do not like the idea of taking the computer system offline for updates, but this is a terrible thing to do, and it puts your data on a huge risk.

The latest version of the software is mainly released to reduce any security risks, and not updating them keeps your devices vulnerable to threats and attacks. You will miss any security patch that comes with the latest updates. Criminals use this to their advantage to steal data from outdated devices. Thus, make sure you always keep all software updated.

4.   Assign people in your organization. Precaution is always better than cure. Once you suffer from a security breach, you will have to pay a lot of fines, and these fines can hurt even more than lost records. Your organization can be charged up to $50,000 or more per lost record. Form a team within your organization who fills an infosec role. Also, have security officials who work on the implementation of HIPAA policies and norms.
5.   Educate your employees about HIPAA. We all know that knowledge is power. You should make sure that all your employees are well aware and educated about HIPAA and its regulations. They should know what personal information should and should not be shared with the patient, outsiders and caregivers.

They should also know about state regulations. Make sure this training happens at least once a week and not just when the employees are hired. Also, make some social media rules to define what is appropriate and what isn’t.

Conclusion

No matter what you do, it can’t be guaranteed that healthcare data will remain safe, but do what you can to avoid breaching. Make sure to read all the five tips and you should be safe. Good luck.