American Public University: IT Security in Hospital Data Breach Thesis

This thesis explores the critical need for robust information security in hospitals, addressing the rising incidents of data breaches and their consequences. It emphasizes the importance of protecting sensitive patient information and the financial and reputational risks associated with data breaches. The research highlights the necessity for healthcare organizations to implement pertinent policies and security awareness programs to mitigate these risks. The study underscores the high costs of breach mitigation in the healthcare sector and advocates for proactive budgeting and the adoption of comprehensive security strategies. It concludes by stressing the responsibility of healthcare management in safeguarding medical records from data breaches, recognizing that no system is entirely secure and continuous vigilance is essential. The assignment provides a detailed analysis of the current state of IT security in hospitals, proposing practical solutions to enhance data protection and ensure patient privacy.

Running head: IT SECURITY IN HOSPITAL 1
The need for high information security in hospital
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IT SECURITY IN HOSPITAL 2
The need for high information security in hospital
Information security is of great importance to each and every organization. This is
because each organization works on defending its properties; security of its assets determine the
faithfulness of the company. However, the past and the current way of improving information
security have not had the desired of recent as data breach incidents. Healthcare should know the
significance of information security.
Awareness Campaign does not only require a change in providing information about risk
and creative behavior. As one must be able to understand and apply a system and must be willing
and motivated to do so, the latter requirement is changed in their attitude and intentions.
Healthcare management handle important information and people’s private data that they may
not be willing to expose and hence and hence they are required to be kept away from ill-
intentioned individuals.
People's greed for money has led to incidents of data breach which have cost a lot of
damage to the organization. Data breach in the healthcare system has created fear among
patients, as there are incidents of disclosure of sensitive information. You could say this is due to
a lack of application and adoption of a robust information security strategies by the management
in healthcare organizations. Such data breaches cause compromise reputation, financial loss and
organization exposure to legal challenges.
Healthcare managements should understand that patients’ data should be protected from
breach and considered private following its consequences. Therefore, this calls for Healthcare to
come up with pertinent policies that are geared toward guaranteeing the security of patients’
private information.

IT SECURITY IN HOSPITAL 3
Healthcare organizations have experienced a considerable increase in data breach
incidents in the recent times; this is because the private nature of the record has made the record
more attractive to people with bad intentions like accessing private information illegally. But the
breach mitigation cost is very high. And this should get considered in by the hospital
management in order to ensure a secure information system. Notably, the mitigation cost of
breach incidents is higher in the hospitals than in any other sector of economy. By knowing this
the hospitals need to budget for mitigation in order to help in fixing some area that can lead to
insecurity of linkage of client’s information.
Another way of overcoming this is by implementing security awareness programs in
healthcare organizations. This is where all healthcare personnel as well as patient are made
aware of data breaches and its impacts. This can help reduce the causes of insecurity.
Although there isn’t a county that is totally protected from the cyber-attack. There is a
need to decrease insecurity issues that arise from a breach as every big organization has one
point at a time experienced data breach in security incidents as no system can be considered one
hundred present secure. Therefore, the responsibility of protecting medical records from data
breach lies in the hands of healthcare management.

IT SECURITY IN HOSPITAL 4