Medical Data Security: Protecting Healthcare Databases

Medical Data Security: Protecting Healthcare Databases

Medical Data Security: We all know by now how technology has helped us make complicated things a bit simpler. One of the fields that benefit the most from this advancement is healthcare. Hospitals and clinics started out with manual and written logs as their conventional way of recording patient information and keeping track of product inventories. Now that cloud computing is available for hectic industries like this one, collecting and maintaining logs has never been easier.

However, higher risks of cybercrimes can occur along with the incredible benefits of storing information online. Hackers are just waiting for the perfect window to attack and steal data. This scenario is what usually happens to a few misconfigured databases in the medical field. During breaches, every aspect of the healthcare system is affected. Patients, clients, employees, stakeholders, businesses, and organizations are largely at risk of data loss that immediately follows data breaches.

In the past years, several hospitals and clinics have reported such cases that affected hundreds of thousands of people. To name a, here are a few of the victims of data breaches caused by misconfigured databases:

Medical Data Security: Amarin Healthcare

A database containing the health information of approximately 78,000 people have been exposed for two months before discovering the data breach. The individuals’ names, contact information, insurance data, pharmacy details, and more were exposed. Because of this breach, Amarin didn’t put the database back online, at least not until they had a secure cloud system to secure sensitive information.

Medical Data Security: Medico Healthcare

With the help of a network security breach research team, Medico discovered an occurring data breach, retained access to the information, and locked the files from the public right away. Still, this incident caused them to expose critical data of about 14,000 people. Medical, financial, and personal information, which mostly dates back to 2018, were exposed. The leaked data included bank details, social security numbers, and managed passwords to registered accounts.

While we can now rely on cloud computing, it’s essential to choose a secure database, especially when storing critical information of a vast number of individuals.