What are the Best Practices to Uphold Healthcare Data Security in the ‘New Normal’?

 

The global pandemic has forced people including those in the telehealth sector to work from their homes. This development has created challenges for upholding data privacy, compliance with regulatory standards like HIPAA, and cybersecurity. The ‘New Normal’ means people working from homes on their personal systems, which may not be fully secured with data encryption features or firewalls. In fact, as per a report from Forescout, a large number of workstations in the healthcare sector do not have a proper version of the Windows operating system. This along with other inherent vulnerabilities in medical devices can mean greater cybersecurity risks for the sector.

The ‘New Normal’ has seen penalties being lifted around telehealth as an emergency response to address the challenges surrounding the global pandemic. Such measures have led medical offices to adopt new telehealth platforms, which were not allowed by HIPAA earlier. With the aim of expanding the number of temporary hospitals and the use of remote devices, many telehealth platforms have been added to the network often without conducting proper due diligence on security. Security researchers have sounded an alarm for the growing targeted attacks on the sector by threat actors. These attacks comprise COVID-19 fraud schemes and hacking of entities belonging to the healthcare and pharma sector. So, to prioritize the smooth and secure running of operations, entities in the sector need to embrace measures such as security testing in HCLS. Let us discuss the best practices to improve healthcare data security healthcare data security in medical officers in the ‘New Normal’ landscape.

Best practices for healthcare software testing in the ‘New Normal’

Securing patients’ data in the connected systems run by healthcare entities has been a challenge for long given the newer techniques employed by threat actors to compromise the systems. In the ‘New Normal’ where the need for providing telehealth has risen sharply, healthcare entities should adopt the following best practices and keep the threat actors at bay.

Safe connection of IoT devices: The medical space has seen increased adoption of IoT devices for a host of reasons. These include ensuring an accurate collection of healthcare data, automating workflows, minimizing waste, reducing the risk of errors, better patient monitoring in real-time, improved disease management, reducing hospital stays and readmissions, and offering a better patient experience, among others. However, healthcare entities should ensure the IoT devices are safely connected to the network thereby addressing the concerns surrounding patient data security. Also, entities must dynamically adapt to the segmentation of devices and choose the right method to communicate within the network.

Enable segmentation of devices and network: When IoT devices communicate within the network they are exposed to being exploited by threat actors unless the communication channels are secure. To ensure the security of IoT devices the latter should be segmented across the network. Besides, a dynamic and efficient device policy should be instituted with proper outlining of the devices’ workflow. This will help the healthcare entities to create segmented networks offering visibility into all vulnerabilities.

Setup a Virtual Public Network (VPN): By establishing a VPN, entities can improve healthcare data security. This is achieved by encrypting the transmission of data and shielding any online activity from threat actors. A VPN shall allow the healthcare staff to access internal portals and secured domains without cybercriminals prying into them. Also, entities should add an extra security layer by setting up a two-time authentication mechanism to verify the identity of persons accessing the VPN.

Proper IT support: Provide proper IT support for devices used by staff such as computers, printers, or routers through authorized service engineers. This can pre-empt threat actors from getting access to the devices, systems, data, and network.

Sensitize staff on cybercrime: It is important for everyone in the value chain to understand the need for compliance with regulatory standards such as HIPAA. The staff should know the consequences of any data breach and how to remain vigilant in identifying any potential risks or threats. They should be provided with proper training on risk and compliance and made aware of the need to vet everything that appears out of place.

Conclusion

The ‘New Normal’ has created perfect scenarios for cybercriminals to take advantage of. It is high time security testing in HCLS is adopted and devices, systems, and networks are secured. By employing risk assessments and mitigating controls, proper visibility into vulnerabilities can be obtained and acted upon thereby ensuring the threat actors are kept at bay while streamlining the administration of telehealth.

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James Daniel is a software Tech enthusiastic & works at Cigniti Technologies. I'm having a great understanding of today's software testing quality that yields strong results and always happy to create valuable content & share thoughts.

Article Source: medium.com