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Health Care and Cyber Security: Increasing Threats Require Increased Capabilities

KPMG – “Four-fifths of executives at healthcare providers and payers say their information technology has been compromised by cyber-attacks. At the core of the increased risk to healthcare organizations is the richness and uniqueness of the information that the health plans, doctors, hospitals and other providers handle. Apart from typical financial fraud, there is also the possibility of medical insurance fraud, or, in the case of providers, attacks on computer-controlled medical devices. As this is the largest part of the U.S. economy and a safeguard of peoples’ well-being, healthcare is a matter of national security. Despite such significant repercussions of a cyber-attack, the healthcare sector lags in terms of its preparedness for cyber threats. As recent events have made clear, protecting information is not easy. Hackers will find opportunities to exploit flaws in the way healthcare organizations currently fund, manage, enable, organize and implement their information protection capabilities. In terms of technical capabilities, the healthcare industry is behind other industries in protecting its infrastructure and electronic protected health information (ePHI) – as commonly seen in the use of outdated clinical technology, insecure network-enabled medical devices, and an overall lack of information security management processes…”

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