black hat news from FierceHealthIT

This week's piece from Network World points to a troubling problem--that hospitals are in crosshairs these days when it comes to cyberattacks and other forms of black-hat hacking. Given the growing... Read more...

Few FierceHealthIT readers would argue it will be challenging to secure a nationally-connected EMR network against intrusion by black-hat hackers and identity thieves. (Managing user authorization and adequately limiting access will be yet another headache, but that's a story for another day.) The thing is, while the technology and know-how may exist, federal regulators aren't taking these security threats seriously enough, some critics say. Article

Another week, another health system data loss. This week the prize goes to Austin's Seton Healthcare Network, which lost personal information on 7,800 patients last week when a thief stole a laptop from a secured building. The data pertains to patients who visited a Seton ER or clinic since July 2005. The laptop's hard drive doesn't contain any clinical information, but a Seton spokesperson admitted that there could be Social Security numbers or Medicaid numbers on the drive. The thief …

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As the theft of patient data from Allina Hospitals and Clinics reminds us (see below), today's healthcare IT departments are in something of a security bind. With HIPAA enforcement looming, maintaining tight data security is more critical than …

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