Privacy & Security

The senator touts "judicious use of the cloud," wider information sharing and "good ol' cyber hygiene" as private-sector best practices – but also says lack of a real deterrent for nation state bad actors has been a federal policy failure.

The COVID-19 telehealth boom has expanded health systems' perimeters – inside and outside the network – and in the process it's made them more vulnerable to breaches.

Security can't be just an afterthought when building healthcare products; it has to be a foundation for the way they are built, says Lawrence Huang, VP of product management at Cisco Meraki.

At ChristianaCare, "we've embedded information security deeply into our strategy and governance," said CEO Janice Nevin. "It's not just an IT issue, it's a patient safety issue, and it's everyone's responsibility."

Panelists at the HIMSS Healthcare Security Forum this week said cybercriminals will likely use tried-and-true techniques, such as phishing emails themed around COVID-19 vaccines or President-elect Biden, to keep exploiting novel vulnerabilities.

The latest security industry forecast from Experian warns that bad actors will continue to take advantage of the COVID-19 crisis next year.

The agency aims to issue a unified industry-wide specification for representing addresses by the end of 2021.

On today's HIMSSCast, host Jonah Comstock sits down with Gabe Gumbs, head of product strategy and innovation at Spirion about his experiences with, and views on, data security and privacy. Gabe and Jonah talk about the difference between privacy and security, when to focus more on one or the other, the advantages healthcare has in this realm, and the challenges it is still facing. Click here to register for next week's Healthcare Security Forum.   Talking points: Healthcare’s edge in security: experience with privacy. Privacy vs. security: Which one is important for what data? The state of privacy and security regulation, and where it might go. What personal information should be private? Does the United States need its own GDPR? Privacy concerns around COVID-19 contact tracing. The limits of de-identification. Data security trends for healthcare providers. How to prepare for ransomware attacks. The paradox of compromise. More about this episode: Gabe's podcast "Privacy Please" Protect what matters most — patient information (Spirion whitepaper) Major security incidents are the new normal for hospitals and health systems Cybercriminals seek to take advantage of rapid telehealth scale-up HHS: More than 2M patients affected by breaches reported in October FBI, HHS warn of 'increased and imminent' cyber threat to hospitals Contact tracing tech sparks privacy concerns, but most consumers and IT experts still support its use

The machine learning-powered tech will be a "key component of our go-forward analytics and digital identity strategy," says CEO Gus Malezis.

A worldwide spear phishing effort, with bad actors impersonating biomedical researchers and targeting company execs, holds "potential hallmarks of nation-state tradecraft," according to a new security report from IBM Security X-Force.