| | August 20178UTLOOK Healthcare Tech IN MY OPINIONHealthcare Cybersecurity: Start with a PlanBill PhillipsBy Bill Phillips, Sr. VP & CIO, University Health System, San Antonio, TexasToday's healthcare landscape continues to become more complex each day. The CIO's role is ever-expanding with additional responsibilities. At the top of this list is the protection and security of the systems and data of the organizations we serve. As we all have seen in the news, the recent Wannacry ransomware attack struck countries and organizations around the world. Many businesses were disrupted, including National Health Service hospitals in the UK, where systems were frozen and data encrypted resulting in chaos. Although the attack was devastating for many, it did bring a heightened awareness to healthcare organizations across the country. CIO's have to deal with the risk of cyber-attacks, which bring down systems, make data unavailable or extract data. Recent studies have valued downtime at a cost of approximately $5,000 per minute. In 2016, there were 329 data breaches of more than 500 records each, exposing a total of 16,471,765 patient records. The average cost of a data breach is $4 million.One of the key differences in Protected Health Information (PHI) versus financial data is that PHI lives forever, and financial information ends at the time of discovery. In other words, if you had your identity stolen, you would immediately cancel your credit cards and change your bank account numbers, which terminates the life of the breach. If your PHI is stolen, you cannot change your medical history. Unfortunately, cybersecurity threats cannot be eliminated, they can only be mitigated. Just look at recent events around the world. Mitigation begins with a plan. Conduct an accurate and thorough assessment of potential risks and vulnerabilities of your environment. If you haven't done so, establish a vulnerability management process. This should be part of your organizations effort to control security risks. Identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities will reduce the likelihood of an attack.
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