cyberSAFE Webinar Series Recap: Looking for a Cure for Medical Identity Theft
While stories about large-scale financial and retail breaches are making headlines on a regular basis, it is medical identity theft that should be taking center stage. Why? In 2013, the healthcare industry experienced more data breaches than ever before, accounting for 43% of all breaches that year.
In the most recent edition of our cyberSAFE webinar series, Ann Patterson of Medical Identity Fraud Association (MIFA) and Dr. Marie-Helen Maras of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, along with CSID’s own Bryan Hjelm, discussed the latest on this topic.
They addressed the trends in medical identity theft, implications for healthcare organizations and patients, and provided recommendations for how the industry – as well as consumers – can make secure changes moving forward. The panelists also took a look at CSID’s findings from our recent survey of healthcare organizations. Watch a recording of the webinar below and read our whitepaper for survey findings and analysis.
Our survey found that most small healthcare facilities are unprepared for data breach. While healthcare breaches are on the rise, most small healthcare facilities feel that their systems adequately limit the risk of a data breach – yet one in three facilities spends less than 10% of their IT budget on protecting patient data, and less than a third (28.6%) have a crisis plan in place in the event of a breach.To better protect patient data and secure their systems, healthcare facilities of all sizes should focus on the following:
- Educate employees and partners
- Install and maintain anti-virus software
- Track, encrypt and password-protect mobile devices with access to patient data
- Audit and vet third party vendors that will have access to patient data
- Implement multi-factor authentication requirements across the organization
We encourage you to check out the corresponding infographic, watch the webinar recording below and read the whitepaper. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can always reach out to us via Twitter and Facebook. Find out more about CSID’s cyberSAFE webinar series and watch previous recordings.