Cybersecurity Issues in Healthcare

This paper discusses the increasing trend of using technology in the healthcare industry and the resulting cybersecurity issues. It explores the impact of cyber attacks on patient data and health outcomes. The paper also presents effective solutions, such as employee training and a new staffing model, to address these issues.

Introduction
The prevalence of various chronic health issues among the growing age population,
the need of healthcare is increasing at an emerging rate. The mortality rate decreased and
hence due to the increase in average age among the general population, massive number of
people will seek treatment for their different kinds of chronic health conditions. With the
increase in demands of the patients, the healthcare industry is acquiring many trends in order
to meet the needs of the patients (Jalali & Kaiser, 2018). The use of technology in utilizing
artificial intelligence, telehealth opportunities and many other facilities is also growing day
by day which is among the trends that the healthcare industries are acquiring across the
world. Due to tremendous amount of advantages people’s desire of using technology while
acquiring healthcare facilities is increased and they are using it even when urgent care is
required. Needless to say, the technological innovation continues to grow and in healthcare
also, the role of technology is increasing in almost all kinds of processes (Jalali & Kaiser,
2018) and it has become a trend. However, the increased use of technology in the healthcare
sector is causing a lot of issues which can be a threat to the improved health outcome of the
patients from all over the world and issues with cyber security is one of them. The
implementation of smart health approaches adopting new technologies can increase
vulnerabilities in information sharing and tracking the confidential health records of the
patients. It can cause breaching of confidential data and exploitation of valuable health
records. If the personal and sensitive data is not secured then patients will be afraid of sharing
their data and hence the diagnosis and treatment process will not be performed properly
which will affect the health outcome of them (Kruse, Frederick, Jacobson & Monticone,
2017). In this paper, the prime issue of the trend of using technology in healthcare has been
discussed and it will also identify some solutions, the recommendations of the experts in
order to address the issues will also be discussed thoroughly. Finally, the paper will conclude

gathering all the important points of the complete paper to provide a brief review about the
issue and the recommended solutions.
Statistics of data breaching
Data breaching in healthcare are a growing threat in the healthcare sector which not
only cause data loss or monetary theft but, at the same time, it also attacks the medical
devices and the infrastructure of the organization. In the year 2017, a report produced by the
Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) presented the
report of data breaching that resulted in the exposure of more than 5 million confidential
healthcare records (Spannbauer, 2019). Again, in the year 2018, the number of exposed
healthcare records almost tripled and it was around 13 million. In the last few years, hacking
and issues with IT security has been a growing concern for the healthcare organizations and
they are struggling to defend their networks from the hackers. According to studies, 2015 was
the record year in which data breaching was the highest. The amount of data of patients was
exposed or stolen in the year 2015 was more than previous 6 years combined. In that year
more than 113 million records were affected as per the studies. Again, 2016 was more than
the last year (HIPAA JOURNAL, n.d.). Also, 2017 was another record breaker year which
depicts that the breaching of data is increasing every year (HIPAA JOURNAL, n.d.). The
surface of attack is growing the criminals are developing new and sophisticated tools to
attack healthcare organizations. Researchers indicated that when it comes about cyber
security, the healthcare industries are much slower to respond than the other industries. It has
been argued by the researchers that the truth cannot be hidden by the healthcare organizations
that healthcare industries are prime target of cyber attack. The sixth annual benchmark study
on the privacy and security of healthcare data which is released by the Ponemon Institute
clearly revealed that 45% healthcare institutions were affected in cyber attack during the time
span from 2014 to 2015 (INFOSEC, 2019). According to the report of the US Department of

Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, near about 1.6 million people reported
that their personal medical records were stolen from the healthcare providers. This bulk
amount of data breaching were reported as the unauthorized access or disclosure of data and
some other researchers termed it as cyber theft or hacking of data. These alarming statistics
clearly indicates that the healthcare industries from all over the world should immediately
take some necessary steps in order to adequately address the issues (Groves, Kayyali, Knott
& Kuiken, 2016). It is important not only to secure the data but also to maintain the
organizational infrastructure.
Data breaching in different organizations
In order to improve the cyber security, organizations revisit and update their protocols
regularly. Also, the organizations define security procedures that address how the staffs will
interact and access the technologies and its facilities maintaining the proper security. In this
purpose some organizations implement two-factor identification process to assure the security
(Pope, 2016). For example, MedStar Health is a huge healthcare system which is Maryland
based was severely incapacitated by a ransomware attack which threatened lives (Ackerman,
n.d.). The organization was forced to shut down its email and the database with vast records.
It was not able to provide radiation treatment to the cancer patients for many days. However,
the organization later on utilized homomorphic encryption in order to address the issue. This
is an impressive technology and it allows encryption of data which is in use that has potential
to lock down a large amount of private and valuable medical information. Another cyber
attack took place in the June of 2017, is named as NotPeya and it caused the damage of $10
billion to the companies and it also affected the computers of healthcare organizations from
all over the world, from Tasmania to Copenhagen (Wetsman, 2019). The systems of the
companies were shut down for many weeks and thousands of healthcare delivery
organizations were unable to use its programs that cause extreme damage to the health of

people. However, Sutter Health was prepared to quickly respond to the attack and it deals
with countless cyber attacks daily. It uses artificial intelligence technology in order to sort
and evaluate the exact issues and to uproot them. The robust cyber security program of Sutter
Health
Estimated effective solutions
In order to address the issue regarding cyber security, various literatures indicated
different types of solution and according to a study, implementing bio-metric based security
can be embraced as an effective solution which is a verification feature of electronic medical
record (Martin, Martin, Hankin, Darzi & Kinross, 2017). However, this new system of
securing data also faces many difficulties. Some of the researchers argued that use of
biometry is also not an ultimate solution as there is evidence of data leakage even after
securing it with biometry. Many researchers identified that lack of funding on cyber security
purpose can cause tremendous issue regarding the data security in various healthcare
organizations. Also, employee negligence is another cause of data breaching as for example,
if an employee open any email attachment containing any malware then it can steal
confidential information stored in that computer. Researchers mentioned that carelessness
and unawareness of the staffs can put their organizations into the risk of cyber crimes. In a
report, it has been found by the researchers that 47% business leaders indicated human error
as the cause of data breaching in their organizations (Reinicke, 2018). Due to this reason, it is
important to increase the knowledge and awareness of the employees in order to minimize the
cyber attacks’ risk in the organizations. In a study of 2015, by Wombat Security
Technologies and the Aberdeen Group, it was identified clearly that proper training of
employees can effectively reduce the risk of cyber attack from 70 to 45% (INFOSEC, 2019).
Therefore, it is essential to educate the staffs about handling confidential data and all the
staffs should also be tested periodically to their level of knowledge about security of data.

There are many healthcare organizations which have started providing training to their
employees regarding the proper usage of confidential data of patients and they also increase
awareness regarding phishing emails and various other types of cyber attacks that can steal
confidential data from the organization (Sheffer et al., 2019). However, training and
educating the staffs require a huge funding and aging workforce can create shortage of
talented staffs in this area. Therefore, adopting a new staffing model in order to improve the
clinical workflow can be the best solution.
Conclusion
Recent trend of implementing technology in the healthcare industry is causing many
issues regarding data security. Cyber attacks are one of the greatest concerns of healthcare
industries which cause a great loss of data and deteriorate the health outcome of the people. A
large number of healthcare organizations faced challenges regarding cyber security and in
this paper, it has been discussed that how those organizations addressed the issues. The
arguments of various researchers have also been identified in this paper. Finally, it can be
concluded that increasing awareness among the employees and enhancing their knowledge
can be an effective solution to address issues of this healthcare trend. Therefore, it is
recommended that conducting trainings and education programs of the employees and
renovating the staffing model can be helpful in this regard.

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