According to the latest Bitglass Healthcare Breach Report, that analysed data from the Department of Health and Human Services, there were close to 600 US healthcare data breaches in 2020 which represents a 55% increase over 2019. It has been estimated that these latest data breaches led to the potential exposure of over 26 million individual’s sensitive Personal Health Information (PHI) that included Social Security numbers, medical history and other personal data.

When a data breach occurs, in addition to the regulatory compliance reporting requirements, it is important to advise any affected individuals in a timely manner to enable them to take appropriate action to mitigate the potential damage caused by their data being compromised.  Unfortunately, in the Healthcare sector, this is often not the case as it is estimated that, on average, healthcare firms take around 96 days to identify that a breach has occurred.

In many cases, hospitals do not have the level of IT security resources, enjoyed by other commercial sectors, to address the broad and growing spectrum of data security challenges. In particular, one area that can be overlooked is the print environment. While there have been moves towards digitization, many hospitals continue to have a relatively high reliance on form and document printing within their clinical and administrative operations.  Left unsecured and unmanaged, the print environment can be an opportunity for external cyber criminals and malicious insiders to access and harvest sensitive patient data. In addition, without monitoring and tracking capabilities, a print related data breach can easily go undetected.

To find out more about how one leading rehabilitation hospital has managed to secure their print environment and protect patient data, whilst enabling clinicians to stay focused on patient care:

Read the case study here

SOURCE Ringdale

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