Electronic healthcare record systems and databases have facilitated the entire healthcare industry to develop, advance, and revolutionize patient care and information collection. Although it is an excellent effort on one side, it has made the system weak and easily accessible to hackers.
If a hacker gets access to EHR or if EHR is present in the black market, then the possibility of identity theft increases by heaps and bounds. Some researchers suggest that the records can be worth up to $1000 in the black market.
With the continuous small and massive data attacks, healthcare security should be under more incredible observation and surveillance. They aim to make information safe and secure and to decrease data breaches.
Tips to Secure Electronic Health Records
If you are concerned about the safety and protection of your patient’s health records and looking for ways to secure the EHR, your wait is over. This article provides eight tips to help you secure the EHR. The tips are as follows:
Perform Risk Assessment regularly
The cyber-security world is progressing with each passing day in the healthcare sector. To cope with the advancements that attackers are making and ensure that the IT environment maintains the same level of security, it is necessary to perform a risk assessment regularly.
Knowing the risks and threats to your system and EHR is essential. Moreover, assess the areas where there is a vulnerability, recognize and organize the data based on risk and take the necessary actions to reduce the possible threats.
Performing risk assessments monthly or annually is not enough. Regularly, the risk assessment shall be carried out.
Audit Trails
The audit trails provide documentation to track every action involving the patient’s information. It is done by automatically registering and recording who is accessing the system, the location, the time of locating, and what they do after accessing.
The EHR systems allow the user to do regular reviews and mark flag any suspicious activity, which can lead to HIPAA violations when information is being logged. The reviews can avoid mistakes due to human error.
Many EHR systems have auditing capabilities; when medical staff access information, the patient’s portals are set to send notifications to every patient.
In a nutshell, the earlier you become aware of a problem quicker you solve it. Thus, audit trails will surely help to address the issue on time.
Data Encryption
By encrypting your data in a way that can only get detected by any authorized programs or users with the access code. The EHRs can make transfer of patient data much safer, such as test results or diagnoses to the patient by patient portals and medical histories to referrals.
Furthermore, the information coding can reduce the damage if your data gets stolen. It also permits securing data within the office. It happens when it gets paired with role-based access control. Thus, only staff members having clearance can see the decrypted data.
Strategic Plan to Prevent and Survive Data Violation
Healthcare organizations give more priority to keeping running the essential departments of the organization in case of an incident like a power outage. However, outlining a detailed plan to promote data security is also necessary and a top priority.
It should include allocating staff to review the regular security tests and implement the data architecture model. Introduce a strategic plan to prevent and survive data violations. It must include steps that should be executed to surmount any security shortfalls. Also, make all desirable adjustments to the data architecture model.
Update Software and Available Patches
The upgrades and patches involve necessary security-related features which prevent recent data breaches.
You can appoint anyone who has the practice to monitor all these upgrades. But make sure that they get installed on an everyday basis.
If you use subscription-based SaaS software, check with the vendor to see whether the security updates get automatically installed or need to update the program periodically.
Remove Unnecessary and Unwanted Data
Not all organizational data need to overextend. Some data also comes from slow and lazy processes and poor data regulation. For example, forms and screens use the patient name, DOB, and social security number as identifications to reduce confusion.
Although it is a worthy goal for paper, electronic records having such information in several databases means that each provides the key to attackers.
Keeping all kinds of sensitive data in one place and using an internally unique identifier to link the database is a safe and secure practice to reduce the possibility of attack harm.
Data should get reviewed before removing it permanently. Carry out this activity regularly. Some data should stay for a long time, while one should delete other data after a short period.
Knowing the data category requires coordination among all the units of an organization. However, that coordination will be more successful when the internal database becomes less appealing to the attackers.
Use your logs
It is among the biggest impossibilities in security. Several devices and procedures generate log files that security analysts can search by hiding in log data. However, many professionals will cry that so much valued log data remain unused in day-to-day management, protection of network, and application environment.
The raw files can become large during short order. For this reason, log file management and automatic analysis system are vital. It can help take the flood data and turn it into a helpful stream.
The log management functionality is built into networks and system management frameworks. It makes this the primary function. It isn’t easy to set up and manage.
Mainly when the organization is not of a large scale and has fewer experienced security analysts, a managed cloud security solution can provide the initial analysis needed to use all the log data available.
Clean Up User Devices
There are many medical practices in which experts use their smartphones and tablets. However, they are often forced to allow personal devices in other cases. In these cases, methods require experts to handle the practice-issued devices for their required work.
The organization uses both procedures, laws, and technology in both conditions. This is to eradicate and carefully control the sensitive patient information within these mobile devices.
No patient’s data will be on personal mobile devices in an ideal world. Virtual desktop machines might allow this, though there are many high back-end costs to utilize this option. In this way, when it is difficult to use this option, it becomes a choice for protecting data.
Mobile device management is progressing rapidly. It now includes choices for coding information, isolating the professional from personal information. Also, it erases professional information in case of device loss or stolen. Although it doesn’t matter how small the practice is, the MDM will not be an option if the experts use it. It should look like a part of the device price when allocating a budget for mobile access.
Conclusion
With increasing cybercrimes, the patient’s EHRs are at high risk. It is, therefore, very crucial to secure them. By following the tips mentioned above, you can surely secure the EHRs.
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About the Author
Rebecca James is an IT consultant with forward thinking approach toward developing IT infrastructures of SMEs. She writes to engage with individuals and raise awareness of digital security, privacy, and better IT infrastructure.
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