Study: Patient data at risk with file-sharing networks

It's been a decade since the height of Napster's popularity, but file sharing remains rampant on the Internet through networks such as Limewire, BitTorrent and Kazaa. And that may threaten the security of personally identifiable health information, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Researchers at the University of Ottawa in Canada used widely available file-sharing software to access documents containing health and financial information from patients at various locations in Canada and the United States. Lead author Khaled El Emam says that his team found that unauthorized users actively searched for files containing such data. "There is no obvious innocent reason why anyone would be looking for this kind of information," El Emam says, according to Healthcare IT News.

"Without additional protection on the health records, like encryption or elevated access controls, it is entirely possible that a mis-configured file sharing tool could gain full access to the records," Robert Grapes, chief technologist of IT security firm Cloakware, says in Healthcare IT News.

To learn more about this study:
- check out this Healthcare IT News story
- read the JAMIA paper

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