The healthcare sector continues to top the list when it comes to data breach rankings. While this is not anything new on its own, some of the statistics behind this situation are alarming. It is estimated that over 40% of all data breaches reported in the past two years are healthcare related and over 90% of all healthcare organizations, both large and small, have been affected by at least one data breach. If you thought that shadowy external hackers are behind all these data breaches, you might want to think again – in the last two years, data breaches by staff members has increased by almost 50% and two thirds of organizations now consider malicious insider attacks or accidental breaches more likely than external attacks.
The Healthcare providers will continue to be a top target for data breach attacks as, alongside the high value placed on illegally obtained healthcare data, the sector tends to invest less in IT / IT security (as a percentage of revenue) at an average of 5% against a weighted industry average of 8.2%. In addition, there is a relatively high reliance on a patchwork of legacy data systems and hardware from different vendors which makes data security difficult to manage.
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, and 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 players and insiders to access and harvest sensitive patient data.
Contact the FollowMe® team to find out how Ringdale’s vendor neutral FollowMe® Print Solution for Healthcare has helped leading healthcare providers around the world to secure their multi-vendor print environment and protect patient data, whilst enabling clinicians to stay focused on patient care.
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Source: Ringdale
