In addition to analyzing client ransomware incidents and other cyberattacks, the privacy and data security specialists at BakerHostetler compared incident response statistics across industries and looked at data breach regulatory response and lawsuits. Of all incidents Baker Hostetler analyzed, healthcare, biotech and pharma took the lion's share at 28%.  According to the firm's analysts, endpoint detection and response tool usage, patching and resilient backup strategies helped prevent attacks, mitigate the impacts of successful network instructions and enabled restoration wit ..read more

Artificial intelligence (AI) solutions can reduce administrative headaches for nurses and clinicians and offer them more time for actual patient care. The technology can automate documentation and administrative tasks like scheduling, so shifts aren’t over- or understaffed. It can provide clinical decision support using relevant, evidence-based information. And robotics can physically assist nurses with medication administration or mobile patient transfers to reduce burden, promote safety and enable clinicians to focus on higher-value tasks. Those are just some of AI’s selling points. But not ..read more

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In yet another ripple from the Change Healthcare cyberattack, the Medical Group Management Association has sought assurances from HHS' Office for Civil Rights that the onus for sending HIPAA breach notifications to affected patients would fall squarely on Change and its parent company – and not physician practices and other providers. WHY IT MATTERS UnitedHealth Group issued a press release this week where, in addition to other updates, it pledged that it would "help ease reporting obligations on other stakeholders whose data may have been compromised as part of this cyberattack," and offered ..read more

Insufficient cybersecurity presents a tremendous threat to patient safety. According to the American Hospital Association, it is vital that organizations align their cybersecurity and patient safety initiatives to safeguard both patient health and their networks.1 Far too often, according to Brian Heersink, Information Technology (IT) Director at San Luis Valley Health in Alamosa, Colorado, organizations overlook a widely used access point that can put their entire network at risk: infusion pump systems. Because of the risks posed by outdated software and firmware, inadequate patching, and mi ..read more

At its first-ever Health Summit in Nashville on Tuesday, Oracle announced a new cybersecurity-focused service for its healthcare customers, Autonomous Shield. WHY IT MATTERS The launch of the new Autonomous Shield Initiative is meant to help clients migrate to a comprehensive electronic health record and cloud infrastructure that can reduce cyber risk, according to the company – thanks to the automation and security of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Autonomous Shield aims to simplify Oracle Health EHR migrations to OCI with built-in security best practices, solution architecture development, ap ..read more

While healthcare organizations depend on network-connected devices for patient care and to improve healthcare delivery, cybercriminals have made them an important entry point for attacks, and they are still unprepared for the scope of cyber threats.  We asked Tyler Reguly, senior manager of security research and development at Fortra, how healthcare IT can improve device management and get a handle on Internet of Things device security vulnerabilities, mobile device management practices, security frameworks, his advice on leveraging artificial intelligence tools for security and mor ..read more

The ongoing impact of the February 21 Change Healthcare cyberattack and subsequent system outage threatens the sustainability of physician practices across the country, possibly resulting in closures, which could destabilize patient care in some areas, according to informal survey findings from the American Medical Association. Practices of 10 physicians or less – the bulk of 1,400 survey respondents, or 78% – appear to be particularly hard hit, AMA said in an announcement last week, noting that, despite the challenges, practices show resilience, with only 15% indicating that their practices ..read more

A new statistical analysis of 90 distinct hospital websites, drawn from a nationally representative sample of 100 community hospitals, finds that those providers – when they had privacy policies available for consumption – were inadequate in how they accurately disclosed the use of third-party tracking technologies to consumers. In addition to comparing details about third-party recipients of collected user data, user rights and potential uses, the study also looked at the readability of the policies available.  Of the community hospitals in the study that reveal in their user-privacy po ..read more

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