Asigra Defends Sensitive Laptop and Mobile Device Data as Healthcare Industry Strategies for Protecting Patient Health Information Evolve
Asigra Inc., a leading cloud backup software provider since 1986, today cited new research that reveals significant growth in digital threats to patient health information (PHI). Recent findings now show that while approaches to patient data protection have evolved over the past several years, the aggressive transition to electronic health records (EHR) and the consumerization of IT have resulted in greater digital threats to patient privacy.
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According to a 2012 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Analytics report titled, Security of Patient Data , “Data breaches not only risk revealing patient health information, they also open up those whose information is compromised to identity theft, fraud and other violations. While hospitals are stepping up to regularly audit their monitoring and response procedures, reports of data breaches are on the rise.”
Among the 207 data breaches that affected more than 500 healthcare organizations over the past 12 months, 27% reported a security breach compared with 19% in 2010 and 13% in 2008. 69% of the organizations that experienced a breach in the last year reported experiencing more than one breach. When asked about the factors contributing to healthcare industry data breaches, 31% cited the use of mobile devices to store health information and 28% cited the sharing of health information with third parties.
The financial impact of a PHI breach is now a significant issue for healthcare organizations as a result of the Red Flags Rule and The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009’s Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act’s (ARRA HITECH) Breach Reporting requirement. While the costs of responding to a data loss event can be exceedingly high, healthcare leaders are now confronted with laws in some states that require remuneration of one thousand dollars per patient, per breach. This has resulted in a significant number of class-action lawsuits where the possible liability may surpass U.S. $4 billion.
Addressing challenges related to secure and compliant end-to-end protection of patient health information, Asigra supports healthcare professionals with the industry’s highest levels of backup data encryption in-flight and at-rest. As the first solution of its kind to receive FIPS 140-2 certification, Asigra Cloud Backup™ has emerged as the premier option to protect laptop and mobile device data for those organizations integrating wireless computing endpoints into their IT environments.
