The Significance of Data Security in Healthcare

Healthcare is one of the major industries that face a persistent threat to data security, as the sector collects a huge volume of sensitive, and lucrative information daily. As per reports, the healthcare industry had the highest cost of a data breach for the 9th consecutive year, costing organizations around US$6.5 million on average, over 60 percent higher than other industries. The total number of 46 healthcare data breaches in April 2019 marks the highest monthly tally since federal authorities started publishing breach statistics more than a decade ago, the HIPAA Journal noted. Another study from HIMSS and Symantec revealed that 75 percent of healthcare organizations invested only 6 percent or less of their IT budgets on cybersecurity that is a smaller share than some other industries like banking and finance. Moreover, other surveys found that the sector has lagged in resources in terms of budget and people committed to security to combat breaches.  

Preparing a Concrete Plan to Address Data Breaches

While the rising costs and budgetary challenges put healthcare workers under increasing pressure, healthcare organizations must consider a strong plan that can help them in conquering these challenges. To do that, a formal written plan must be constructed, and disseminated among leadership teams and IT staff, and reviewed regularly to make sure action points are up to date and consider various potential issues. According to the IBM Security and Ponemon Institute, only 15 percent of healthcare organizations have fully implemented security automation technologies. On the other hand, companies with an incident response team who also extensively tested their incident response plan experienced US$1.23 million less in data breach costs on average than those that had neither measure in place. Since more than 11 billion records leaked in data breaches over the past 3 years, companies are facing increasing scrutiny from consumers and regulators and will likely face mounting cost, brand damage and regulation consequently.  

Ensuring Cloud Architecture for Successful Data Migration

Today, healthcare organizations are largely focusing on data migration to the cloud. They are migrating their infrastructure and data to bolster scalability and accessibility. Though, migrating data to cloud with specific goals is typically challenging. So, before migrating, organizations must review application architecture and coupling that will help them in recognizing the required architecture, whether they hunt for leveraging infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) or platform-as-a-service (PaaS).  

Applying Modern Security Tools

As technologies advance with each passing minute, mobile technology has emerged as an influential solution, armed with smartphones and tablets, that can provide medical professionals the ability to access their patients’ records and other data at any time. Mobile devices have become so essential to the hospitals and will continue to increase, as a survey of practitioners and decision-makers expect that 97% of bedside nurses and 98% of physicians will utilize mobile devices in their work by 2022. Artificial intelligence also can lend a hand to healthcare organizations, as it performing many complex tasks more quickly and effectively, at a lower cost. Similar to our daily lives, the potential of both AI and robotics in healthcare is vast and are progressively becoming a crucial part of the healthcare system. When looking at market research reports, AI in the healthcare market is expected to reach US$27.6 billion through 2025. It is largely attributable as several major tech vendors, including Microsoft, Google, Apple, IBM, Amazon, among others, are making significant investments in this disruptive solution. There are several applications available in the market where AI can deliver far fetched value to the healthcare industry, including Personal health virtual assistant; Advanced analytics and research; Personal life coach; Healthcare bots; Medical imaging analysis and diagnosis assistance; and Dictation assistance with NLP.