News Articles

By Rick Kam For all of its benefits, cloud computing poses very real dangers to covered entities responsible for safeguarding protected health information (PHI). The cloud model, which the IT industry has been embracing for its up-front cost savings and efficiencies for years now, is more recently being recognized by the healthcare realm for its potential […]

A report says cyber criminals are seeking what they consider easy targets. By Pamela Lewis Dolan Small organizations, including physician practices, represented the largest number of data breaches in 2011, according to Verizon’s annual Data Breach Investigations Report. The report examined 855 breaches across the globe that accounted for 174 million compromised records in 2011. […]

DEBRIEFING THE PHI REPORT: DETERMINING THE TRUE COST OF A DATA BREACH By Jenny Laurello This week I had the chance to listen to a webinar highlighting the recently released report on The Financial Impact of Breached Protected Health Information. Released on March 5, the “PHI Report” has already been downloaded by more than 1,700 users, with its goal being […]

The American National Standards Institute has released a report emphasizing the business incentives for healthcare providers to improve their IT security, and the potential costs of failures to increase security protocols. The report notes that the healthcare industry’s move toward fully adopting electronic health records increases the opportunities for protected health information (PHI) to be […]

Experts say PHI protectors can’t pay for data protection because they don’t know how to make the business case for it. As the number of healthcare data breaches continues to snowball, executives put in charge of safeguarding protected health information (PHI) can’t keep up with the risks inherent with increased deployment of electronic health records […]

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has released a report on protected health information (PHI) security, namely, The Financial Impact of Breached Protected Health Information: A Business Case for Enhanced PHI Security, which offers a novel means of evaluating PHI at risk. The report would enable healthcare providers to conceive a business case for the investment […]

Compliance in many organizations is seen as only a costly inconvenience By Glenn S. Phillips Sometimes clarity comes out of the blue, including clarity about compliance issues. Recently I was meeting with friend and business associate Ben Drake. His company works with networking and data protection technology for a number of businesses. I mentioned how some organizations […]

By Ron Shinkman Although hospital operators know that a data breach can lead to significant consequences–lawsuits, loss of business and reputation–a new report by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) can help them place a specific price tag on such mishaps. The report released last week includes a section on what it refers to as “PHIve”–a five-step process […]

By Michelle McNickle The risk of protected health information being breached has grown dramatically within the past few years, and to combat the threat, the HIPAA Security Rule was created to provide organizations with administrative, physical, and technical guidelines to safeguard their electronic PHI. “The guidelines underscore a higher goal of the HIPAA Security Rule: helping […]