The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a formal warning on Tuesday on vulnerabilities detected in decades-old software used in many of today's medical devices and hospital networks. The warning claims that 11 vulnerabilities exist in IPnet, a third-party software component that supports network communications across computers.
Healthcare continues to see staggering growth in breaches to patient health information. In the first half of 2019 alone, 32 million health records were breached, compared to 15 million records in the entire year of 2018. However, this trend of growing cyber breaches in healthcare is likely to persist due to the following characteristics of the healthcare industry...
Image Source: Unsplash Finding a new health-related app that tracks symptoms, increases self-care behaviors, or offers disease-specific education can be exciting for consumers. However, many apps share information with a host of other companies for marketing purposes. Often, these companies have nothing to do with healthcare and are not even a business the individual uses.
Health data and medical records belonging to millions of Americans have been found online, unprotected and available for abuse by anyone with basic computer knowledge. The medical records of more than 5 million patients in the U.S. and millions more across the globe are available to view online using free software programs or a regular web browser.
Even though the healthcare industry has been slower to adopt Internet of Things technologies than other industries, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is destined to transform how we keep people safe and healthy, especially as the demand for lowering healthcare costs increases. The Internet of Medical Things refers to the connected system of medical devices and applications that collect data that is then provided to healthcare IT systems through online computer networks.
Introduction Developing new drugs is an expensive, time-consuming endeavor. A critical output of the drug development process, besides the compound itself, is data. As you may have read recently, Zolgensma™ re-surfaced in the press because of supposed data manipulation in a specific animal testing procedure. Needless to say, this is a big deal.
Premera Blue Cross has agreed to pay $10 million to 30 states following a data breach that exposed sensitive information on over 10 million people across the country.
Healthcare breaches continue to be featured in the news. Hospitals continue to be ideal targets for hacking and other cybersecurity threats. This is evidenced by the increasing number of cyber attacks, including sophisticated ransomware attacks on hospitals. Many hospitals are beefing up their technologies and infrastructure to address the threat of cyber attacks. But they are neglecting a major weak link in data security: the clinicians.
The healthcare industry is one where the mission is very straightforward – empower people to live with the highest quality of life possible for them. This means keeping lives safe and secure, all while armies of cyber criminals are working diligently to do the opposite.
