Take Stock of Your Cybersecurity on Data Privacy Day

By Jonathan Springston, Editor, Relias Media

Jan. 28 is an annual celebration of Data Privacy Day, which marks the anniversary of the signing of Convention 108, the first international, legally binding document concerning data privacy and protection.

This year, the National Cybersecurity Alliance expanded this campaign into Data Privacy Week (Jan. 24 – Jan. 28). The group shared valuable tips for individuals and businesses about how to keep sensitive information away from bad actors.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry has been battling a rise in cyberattacks. The combination of the pandemic’s effects — crowded facilities, expanded telehealth usage, exhausted workers — with more reliance on medical devices has left the industry vulnerable to cybercriminals.

In a 2021 survey, healthcare leaders shared their top concerns in this area: a security breach with someone hacking into the computer system (66%), company/organization becoming a victim of cyber extortion/ransomware (63%), and a system glitch causing a company’s computers to go down (62%).

Healthcare Risk Management and its quarterly supplement HIPAA Regulatory Alert are excellent resources for ongoing education in this area. For example, this recent article includes information that can help leaders prepare their organizations for critical device security incidents.

Part of building trust with patients is keeping their personal data and sensitive medical information away from prying eyes and bad actors. A cyberattack that compromises these data can shatter that trust, lead to malpractice liability, and put patients in danger.

Another vital resource is the Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services that provides ongoing sector alerts and threat briefs, such as this recent bulletin about a nasty software vulnerability that can place healthcare data in jeopardy.