Healthcare Data Security

Running Head: HEALTHCARE DATA SECURITY
Healthcare Data Security
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HEALTHCARE DATA SECURITY1
Summary of a recent Australian Healthcare data breach
Australian Healthcare data breach occurred in Cabrini Hospital in Melbourne in the
Melbourne Heart Group department. This data breach crime occurred on 21st of February
2019. The cyber fraudsters had accessed almost 15000 medical files of patients. The medical
professionals were not able to access the files of some patients for almost three weeks. The
cyber-attack had crippled the server and corrupted the data in the system. The files were
scrambled. The records are believed to be hacked either from North Korea or Russia but it is
not fully confirmed. The server of the clinic was hacked with malware and the fraudster
demanded payment in cryptocurrency in return to share the password in order to break
encryption.
Fig 1: The probable mode of breach that occurred in Cabrini Hospital (Martin, Kinross &
Hankin, 2017)
Measures to avoid data breaching in future
The healthcare industry is indeed vulnerable to the cyber criminals hence it is important to
prevent the incidents of breaching of the healthcare data. This is because the people working
in the health care sectors are party to immense amounts of information of the patient which is
highly sensitive and may include medical records (Argaw et al., 2019). These sectors are

HEALTHCARE DATA SECURITY2
considered to be goldmines of valuable information. Therefore, the need arises to securely
protect the information. The security measures in the healthcare industry are indeed poor and
hence breaching of these valuable data is considered as an inevitable outcome (Martin et al.,
2017).
The health care industries should conduct security risk assessment annually that should
account for the changes that occur in a healthcare in a year like introducing new systems,
enhancement of the infrastructure, restructuring the organisation as well as employee
turnover. These incidents can promote the occurrence of new vulnerabilities (Gupta, Agrawal
& Yamaguchi. 2016). The employees working in the health care sector should be educated
about the importance of data security since lack of awareness can lead to breaching of the
data. This would promote enforcement of the best practices to keep the data secure in the
workplace. The devices and records should be monitored at continuous intervals. Breaching
is often the result of stealing valuable data from home, office or vehicle (Chowdhury et al.,
2018). Encryption of the data is one of the best measures to prevent healthcare data breach.
But there are significant challenges to encryption. The access to patient information should be
restricted. Promoting subnet wireless networks also aids in preventing data breach at health
care centres. The information technology structure should also be modernized (Gupta,
Agrawal & Yamaguchi. 2016).