Guest Column: PHI: 5 Important Guidelines For Avoiding The Next Breach

By Todd Feinman, CEO, Identity Finder

PHI (Personal Health Information) breaches cost the healthcare industry billions each year and undermine patient trust. This article provides 5 tips to avoiding these incidents.

"We've had a breach." It's a sentence nobody wants to hear, but breaches in the healthcare industry are unfortunately common. The Open Security Foundation reports that the healthcare industry is responsible for 14 percent of all incidents since 2005, and the Ponemon Institute reports that healthcare breaches cost twice as much as retail-sector breaches.

In all, healthcare breaches cost $282 per record in lost customers, damage control, litigation, and lost revenue. The healthcare sector spends $6B dollars every year to remediate breaches, and healthcare organizations with poor personal health information (PHI) management policies spend an average of $1M per year dealing with data breaches.

As a healthcare organization, your most valuable assets are your patients' and customers' trust. Breaches directly undermine patient trust, and as a result the healthcare sector has the highest "churn" rate: 6.5 percent of patients leave after a breach, compared to the average of 3.6 percent.

The healthcare industry faces a perfect storm of factors that make breaches more likely. First, the industry is the custodian of a wide range of PHI. Second, the healthcare industry is notoriously slow at adopting leading practices and new technology. Third, large healthcare facilities typically have hundreds or thousands of employees and healthcare professionals with access to PHI. Fourth, smaller practitioners often lack the knowledge and resources to properly secure their networks and PHI.

Here are 5 things to help your healthcare organization prevent the next breach: Access This Content To Read This Article In Its Entirety.