Helping Healthcare Organizations Protect Patient Records Case Study

Background

CyberSecOp is a cybersecurity consulting firm that specializes in helping healthcare and ambulatory care organizations protect their patient records. The firm has been in business for over 10 years and has a team of experienced security professionals who have a deep understanding of the healthcare industry and the specific security challenges that healthcare organizations face.

Challenge

The healthcare industry is a prime target for cyberattacks with a 69% increase in cyber-attacks from 2020 to 2022. The most common security breaches include phishing, malware, ransomware, theft of patient data, insider threats and hacked IOT devices. Since patient records contain a wealth of sensitive information, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers and medical histories, threat actors are active in their efforts to commit identity theft, fraud and other crimes. 

In addition to the financial and reputational damage that can be caused by a cyberattack, healthcare organizations are also subject to a number of regulatory requirements, including HIPAA, HITRUST, and HiTech. These regulations impose strict requirements on how healthcare organizations must protect patient information.

Solution

CyberSecOp works with healthcare and ambulatory care organizations to develop and implement comprehensive cybersecurity solutions that meet the organization's specific needs and requirements. The firm's solutions include:

• Security assessments - CyberSecOp conducts security assessments to identify security vulnerabilities in an organization's IT infrastructure. These assessments can be used to identify areas where security needs to be improved as well as elevating the issue of cyber risk as an enterprise and strategic risk-management issue.

• Penetration testing - CyberSecOp conducts penetration tests to simulate a cyberattack on an organization's IT infrastructure. These tests are used to identify security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers.
  

• Incident response - CyberSecOp provides incident response services to help organizations respond to cyberattacks. These services include:

• Incident containment

• Data breach notification

• Public relations support

• Security awareness training - CyberSecOp provides security awareness training to help employees understand the importance of security and how to protect patient information.

• Security consulting - CyberSecOp provides security consulting services to help organizations develop and implement security programs. These services include:

• Risk assessment

• Security policy development

• Security architecture design

• Security implementation

Benefits

CyberSecOp's cybersecurity solutions have helped healthcare and ambulatory care organizations to improve their security posture and protect their patient records. The firm's clients have reported a number of benefits, including:

• Reduced risk of cyberattacks.

• Improved compliance with regulations.

• Increased security awareness among employees.

• Reduced costs associated with security breaches. 

Conclusion

The best defense against cybercrime begins with elevating the issue of cyber risk as an enterprise and strategic risk-management issue.  CyberSecOp is a leading provider of cybersecurity consulting services to the healthcare and ambulatory care industry, available to assist your organization in uncovering strategic cyber risk and vulnerabilities along with risk mitigation strategies; incident response planning; vendor risk management and security awareness training to address the pragmatic realities that plague us every day.   Our team of experienced security professionals has a deep understanding of the healthcare industry and the specific security challenges that healthcare organizations face. CyberSecOp's cybersecurity solutions have helped healthcare and ambulatory care organizations to improve their security posture and protect their patient records.

Contact Us

If you are interested in learning more about CyberSecOp's cybersecurity solutions, please contact us today. We would be happy to discuss your needs and develop a plan to help you protect your organization.

CyberSecOp

Web: www.cybersecop.com

Phone: (866) 973-2677

Healthcare Case Studies & Forensics Analysis

Healthcare Security Case Studies & Forensics Analysis

The IT organization of healthcare (original name withheld) was facing a great deal of challenges with day-to-day IT service delivery. While critical activities, such as end-of-day, backup and restore functions, and scheduled server reboot for certain critical servers were documented on paper for regulatory compliance reasons, most processes were at best documented in individual employees’ heads.

There was poor change control; something broke every other day and it was perfectly acceptable to have unplanned downtime of Healthcare services for a few hours every month. Often, the unplanned downtime was due to, for example, failed system upgrades or security configuration modifications by the security administrators without proper impact assessments. Fortunately, the enterprise’s internal control department had some oversight over the critical banking infrastructure; otherwise, medical operations could have suffered a total systemic failure.

Healthcare Medical Center, has agreed to pay a $218,400 settlement to federal authorities for what the government is calling “potential violations” of data privacy and security breach notifications rules under HIPAA, including in a relatively rare enforcement area, Internet-based file-sharing services.

The Office for Civil Rights at HHS, which has federal HIPAA privacy and security rule enforcement authority, first received a complaint in November 2012 that members of organization’s workforce used an Internet-based document-sharing application “to store documents containing electronic protected health information (ePHI) of at least 498 individuals without having analyzed the risks associated with such a practice.”

In a separate incident, in August 2014, the hospital reported to HHS that a former workforce member had stored patient-identifiable health records of 595 individuals on a stolen personal laptop and USB flash drive.

According to a recent report on employee Internet usage by the Campbell, Calif.-based security firm Skyhigh Networks, employees at an average healthcare organization use a total of 928 cloud services, many without the knowledge of their IT departments. File-sharing services were among the top five uses of cloud services by healthcare workers in the report.

“Organizations must pay particular attention to HIPAA’s requirements when using Internet-based document-sharing applications,” said Office for Civil Rights Director Jocelyn Samuels. “In order to reduce potential risks and vulnerabilities, all workforce members must follow all policies and procedures, and entities must ensure that incidents are reported and mitigated in a timely manner.”

In addition to the payment, the settlement includes a corrective action plan “to cure gaps in the organization’s HIPAA compliance program raised by both the complaint and the breach.” organization has also reported to the civil rights office a breach of 6,831 lost patients’ identifiable records on paper or film, according to the “wall of shame” list kept by the office for breaches involving 500 or more individuals.

In April, 2012, a five-physician medical practice, Phoenix Cardiac Surgery, agreed to a $100,000 settlement for failing to have HIPAA-required business associate agreements with providers of their Internet-based calendar and e-mail service.

“Between these two cases,”, “what it stands for is OCR’s expectation you’re going to have to have a business associate agreement with any cloud-based (service) providers. And you need a risk analysis.”

“So, there appears to be a whistle-blower,”  “It shows the importance of having a process for hearing concerns from your employees about addressing HIPAA, or they might go to the government instead.”

Since September 2009, when the civil rights office started keeping a public list of breaches involving 500 or more individuals, 1,265 breaches have been reported exposing the records of nearly 135 million people, equal to the populations of California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas combined.

CYBER SECURITY CISO SERVICES 

• Cyber Security CISO Digital forensics services

• Cyber Security CISO Vulnerability and risk assessments

• Cyber Security CISO Internal and external penetration testing

• Cyber Security CISO Policy and plan development

• Cyber Security CISO Configuration management, design, and remediation

• Cyber Security Consulting Enterprise security architecture design and re-design

• Cyber Security CISO Malicious code review

• Cyber Security CISO Computer Security incident response

• Cyber Compliance Operations

• Cyber Security Consulting Engineering and architecture design

• Cyber Security Consulting Operations management

• Cyber Security Consulting Application and software security assurance

• Cyber Security Consulting Insider threat and APT assessment

• Cyber Security Consulting Social engineering (targeted phishing)

• Cyber Security Consulting IT risk management and compliance

• Cyber Security CISO IT Network Security Consulting