Security and Privacy of Big Data in Healthcare

Security and Privacy of Big Data in Healthcare Organizations

The digitalization of the healthcare sector has seen a major fundamental transformation in the last few years. Big data analytics in healthcare has huge potential for healthcare sector development as well as raises concerns about data security and privacy. The healthcare sector is susceptible to major data breaches of the patients. The data mining procedures to find out sensitive data and spread it to the public leads to data breaches.

Healthcare organizations need to ensure the data security of their patients. To ensure the security of big data in healthcare organizations, measures must be taken to protect the administrative and clinical information from external and internal risks.

Here are a few measures that the healthcare organizations can take to ensure data security:

Encrypt patient data

Data encryption is a common process that every industry can use to secure the data. The healthcare sector can use encryption to secure sensitive data that is readable to the authorized and intended users. In case of a data breach, the encrypted files will be unreadable to the cyber attackers.

Restrict access to data

Prohibit access of sensitive data of patients to requisite users who require the access to perform their tasks. The users must undergo user authentication or verification steps to ensure that the patient data is available only to authorized users. Additionally, the organizations can also implement multi-factor authentication through which the users need to provide identification proof. This will help to track unauthorized users in healthcare organizations.

Security of IoMT

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is the network of medical device information, software platforms, and hardware information that is used to connect healthcare information technology. It allows wireless devices to communicate over the internet for the fast-pace medical data. These devices involve monitoring patients and accessing sensitive data. This has led to privacy issues and so, securing the IoMT devices by regular updating of the devices and a authentication process is important to ensure big data security.

Assess third-party vendor risk

With the transmition of the healthcare information between hospitals and the entities involved in it and facilitating the payment method, there is a high risk of third-party vendors. So, carefully evaluate the risk of the third-party and take necessary measures. In case of data breach in your healthcare organization due to the third-party vendor, the organization will be liable for it.

Proper employee training

One of the most common problems in the healthcare sector that leads to data privacy issues is the lack of properly trained employees. The employees must be trained regarding general data privacy and cybersecurity issues so that they can step in case issues occur. The organization must check the sites regularly for cyberattacks. This equips the employees to make necessary decisions when a data breach prevails.

The invasion of patient privacy data has emerged as a potential threat and attack in the information systems. Healthcare organizations must verify that the applications used for their operation agree to privacy agreements and that sensitive information is kept private regardless of privacy regulations.

Moreover, healthcare organizations manage to safeguard personal patient information and perform legal responsibilities regarding personal data to address the growing risk of data protection legislation.