Empowering Healthcare E-Commerce: Navigating Cybersecurity Challenges

Empowering Healthcare E-Commerce: Navigating Cybersecurity Challenges with CyberSecOp

Consumer expectations in healthcare are evolving, paving the way for exciting opportunities for healthcare organizations in e-commerce, remote care, and technology based advancements in care. However, with the rise in cyberattacks, it's crucial for regulated health companies venturing into any of these areas to prioritize and harden their cybersecurity measures. Analysts project significant growth in the global healthcare cybersecurity market, estimated to reach around US$58.4 billion by 2030.

To navigate this evolving landscape successfully, healthcare companies must adopt scalable and adaptable e-commerce solutions that prioritize the protection of Protected Health Information (PHI), while also remaining compliant. Choosing the right platforms grounded in security-by-design principles is vital. Integration of cybersecurity measures and auditable compliance across organizational processes is essential, ensuring industrialized security, availability, and global reach.

CyberSecOp offers assistance through cybersecurity solutions focused on Direct to Consumer for Consumer Product security solutions, addressing the evolving consumer needs in healthcare. Trust is paramount, particularly in the healthcare sector, as the industry embraces digital direct-to-consumer (DTC) models. Building trust is essential for long-term success.

Open communication about PHI safeguarding measures builds consumer trust in healthcare ecosystems, fostering engagement and sustainable growth. Establishing long-lasting consumer relationships based on trust is paramount, influencing consumer decisions and promoting brand loyalty.

Modernizing and hardening direct-to-consumer channels in regulated healthcare markets presents significant opportunities, contingent upon effective risk management and trust-building efforts with support from CyberSecOp will build that trust.

As a security consultancy, CyberSecOp provides award winning, industry recognized, expert guidance on cybersecurity strategies tailored specifically for the healthcare industry, ensuring comprehensive protection of PHI and compliance with regulatory requirements.

Healthcare Cyber Breaches and Statistics

Cyber breaches in the healthcare industry can have serious consequences, as they can compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of sensitive patient information. These breaches can lead to financial loss, damage to reputation, and regulatory fines for the affected organizations. They can also have serious consequences for patients, including identity theft, financial loss, and harm to their physical and mental health.

According to a survey conducted by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) in 2018, only 36% of healthcare organizations reported having a fully implemented cybersecurity program. The survey also found that only 37% of healthcare organizations had a formal incident response plan in place, and only 29% had regularly scheduled cybersecurity training for employees.

There have been several high-profile healthcare cyber breaches in recent years, including the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack that affected the National Health Service in the UK and the 2018 breach of the health insurance company Anthem, which exposed the personal information of nearly 79 million individuals.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the healthcare industry has consistently had the highest number of reported data breaches of any sector. In 2020, the HHS received reports of 1,363 breaches affecting a total of over 36 million individuals. The most common types of breaches reported were hacking/IT incidents (43.8%), unauthorized access/disclosure incidents (33.7%), and theft incidents (22.5%).

It is important for healthcare organizations to implement robust cybersecurity measures to protect patient information and prevent cyber breaches. This includes regularly updating and patching systems, training employees on cybersecurity best practices, and implementing strong passwords and access controls.

high-profile cyber breaches in the healthcare

There have been several high-profile cyber breaches in the healthcare industry in recent years. Some examples include:

• In 2021, the health insurance company Premera Blue Cross announced a data breach that affected over 11 million individuals. The breach occurred in 2014, but was not discovered until 2015. The company discovered that hackers had gained access to its systems and had potentially accessed personal and medical information of its customers.

• In 2020, the healthcare provider UnityPoint Health suffered a data breach that affected over 1.4 million individuals. The breach occurred when an employee fell victim to a phishing attack, which allowed hackers to gain access to the company's systems and potentially view or steal patient information.

• In 2019, the healthcare provider Quest Diagnostics announced a data breach that affected nearly 12 million individuals. The breach occurred when an unauthorized third party gained access to the company's systems and potentially accessed patient information.

• In 2018, the health insurance company Anthem suffered a data breach that affected nearly 79 million individuals. The breach occurred when hackers gained access to the company's systems and potentially accessed the personal and medical information of its customers.

It is important for healthcare organizations to implement robust cybersecurity measures to protect against cyber breaches and prevent the unauthorized access or disclosure of sensitive patient information.

healthcare HIPAA and cyber protection

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a US law that sets standards for protecting certain health information. HIPAA requires covered entities (such as healthcare providers, health plans, and healthcare clearinghouses) and their business associates to implement safeguards to protect the privacy and security of protected health information (PHI).

HIPAA requires covered entities to implement physical, technical, and administrative safeguards to protect PHI. These safeguards include:

• Physical safeguards: measures to secure the physical environment where PHI is stored, such as locking doors and securing servers.

• Technical safeguards: measures to protect against unauthorized access to PHI, such as firewalls, encryption, and access controls.

• Administrative safeguards: policies and procedures to ensure the proper handling of PHI, such as training employees on HIPAA requirements and conducting risk assessments.

HIPAA also requires covered entities to report certain types of breaches of PHI to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and, in some cases, to affected individuals.

It is important for covered entities and their business associates to comply with HIPAA requirements to protect the privacy and security of PHI and prevent cyber breaches. This includes implementing appropriate safeguards and regularly reviewing and updating their HIPAA compliance programs.

Healthcare is a Top 3 Cyber Target

 Attacks on the healthcare industry are on the rise as noted in a recent article published in CYBERSECOP.  Healthcare providers of all sizes are subject to attack and in this case, CHRISTUS Health learned of “unauthorized access” likely similar to 254 ransomware incidents targeting patient care facilities between June 2020 and April 2022 worldwide.  Patients are at risk, both their health and their PII where threat actors can alter and/or add to patient billings with no notice of impropriety.  The true impact will be hard to discern until more time and data are collected but we know one thing for sure, the healthcare industry needs to take cybersecurity as seriously as they do patient care and follow their own advice; Plan, Prevent, Protect and Respond.

Plan – Get a Risk Assessment to identify and understand your cybersecurity vulnerabilities is one of the most critical steps as the awareness will lead to a prioritized remediation plan.  Even a chink in the armor will have your patients, employees, and community concerned as a cyber-attack will likely affect critical operations because the prize is financial data, patient, and employee Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

Prevent - After an assessment is completed, you need a trusted and reliable security cyber organization to assist in leveraging the right framework and controls to be measured by such as HITURST, HITECH, HIPAA and PCI.  These guidelines assist in defining the appropriate critical security controls for effective cyber defense.  These efforts can be awareness training, policy creation & enforcement, and security controls as well as incident response readiness and governance.  It’s a journey, not a sprint.

Protect – Within most remediation plans include investments in endpoint protection dark web monitoring and focusing on digital trust goals to ensure the technology investments already made as well as those in the future work in harmony.  Like a Rubik’s cube, the goal is to have every facet of your organization in order, not just celebrating a single win.  It is important to have a managed security partner to protect your patients, employees, devices, and data with monitored protection systems along with managed & encrypted backups with a Security Operations Center staffed with certified security professionals watching and engaging on your behalf 24x7x365.

Respond – Did you know that a threat actor will live in your ecosystem for an average of 121 days mining sensitive data, passwords, organization charts, and behaviors before acting?  Nearly 95% of ransomware attacks are preventable so what starts as a threat becomes a technology issue, then a business risk issue, and eventually decision-making and communications issue at the board level.  Do you pay the ransomware or not?  Are we able to recover our data?  Has the threat actor accessed our PII?  And equally important is how do you keep from reaching this point again.  Having an incident response assessment and plan might be the one thing you do if you don’t buy into everything else.  You should receive an IT assessment of “how capable are we to thwart an attack?” and “how able are we to recover if breached?”  Buying cyber insurance is not the silver bullet it used to be so having an incident partner who is proactively focused on your company’s sensitive data and reputation is paramount.

Not unlike a hospital, there are two main ways to address cyber security by coming through the Emergency Room or the front door proactively for testing; I recommend the latter.  A proactive health check is the best step to understanding your ability to fight off an attack like a stress test.  The results may drive adjustments in behavior and readiness, such as point endpoint detection, policy creation & enforcement, and security training.  If you enter the ER, then don’t panic because you read this blog and signed up a reputable security partner to react & respond, including quarantining affected systems to prevent the ransom spread, resetting all passwords, checking your backups, activating your existing crisis/DR plans and negotiate with the threat actor if that is the best business decision communicating carefully along the way with detailed documentation.  The moral of this story is that hope is not a strategy, so know your security scorecard and realize cyber readiness is a journey, not a sprint.

Author: Christopher Yula

HIPAA Modernization of Security Standards

HIPAA Modernization of Security Standards

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known (if not always spelled correctly) as HIPAA, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in August 1996.

A lot has changed in the two decades since – in the ways consumers interact with health systems and the ways technology is transforming care delivery and the patient experience. So maybe it's time to give the privacy law a refresh, said the American Medical Informatics Association and the American Health Information Management Association.

WHY IT MATTERS

As access to personal health information is easier than ever, with smartphones now ubiquitous and apps and connected devices proliferating by the day, both AMIA and AHIMA have voiced support for HIPAA modernization.

In a joint appearance on Capitol Hill, in a presentation about unlocking data for patient empowerment, experts from the two groups highlighted how healthcare has a lot of catching up to do to serve a population used to online shopping, travel booking, review sites and more.

Webinar: The Future of Medicine: Protecting Privacy Without Impacting Quality of Care

Toward this vision of improved patient experience, AMIA and AHIMA said U.S. policymakers should take steps to update HIPAA to enable greater data access and portability – something that looks more likely than it did even a few months ago.

It could be done in a couple different ways, they said. First, potentially, by establishing a new concept of a health data set, with that HDS comprising all the clinical, biomedical and claims data maintained by a covered entity or business associate.

Another option is to revise HIPAA's existing "designated record set" definition, requiring certified health IT products to provide that amended DRS to patients digitally – enabling in a way that enables them to use and reuse their data.

They explained that a new definition for HDS would support individual HIPAA right of access and guide the future development of ONC's Certification Program so individuals could view, download, or transmit to a third party this information electronically and access this information via application programming interface.

Revising the existing DRS definition, meanwhile, offer more clarity and predictability for both providers and patients, AMIA and AHIMA said.

THE LARGER TREND

Even as the availability and maturity of consumer technology has improved, "more than two decades after Congress declared access a right guaranteed by law, patients continue to face barriers," said Dr. Thomas Payne, medical director, IT Services at UW Medicine. "We need a focused look at both the technical as well as social barriers."

AMIA and AHIMA called a broader conversation regarding consumer data privacy, and called on Congress to "extend the HIPAA individual right of access and amendment to non-HIPAA Covered Entities that manage individual health data, such as mHealth and health social media applications. The goal is uniformity of data access policy, regardless of covered entity, business associate, or other commercial status."

Moreover, the groups said regulators should clarify existing regulatory guidance related, for example, to third-party legal requests, such as those by lawyers looking for information without appropriate patient permissions.

ON THE RECORD

"Congress has long prioritized patients' right to access their data as a key lever to improve care, enable research, and empower patients to live healthy lifestyles," said Dr. Doug Fridsma, president and CEO and AMIA. "But enacting these policies into regulations and translating these regulations to practice has proven more difficult than Congress imagined."

"AHIMA's members are most aware of patient challenges in accessing their data as they operationalize the process for access across the healthcare landscape," said AHIMA CEO Wylecia Wiggs Harris, in a statement. "The language in HIPAA complicates these efforts in an electronic world."