Although healthcare professionals strive to deliver quality healthcare services, it is also imperative to consider patients’ privacy. Patient data protection is more than just compliance with the guidelines set up by the General Data Protection Regulations. Health information is among an individual’s sensitive private data that calls for healthcare providers and IT professionals to safeguard cybersecurity.
Healthcare facilities are a hub for cybercriminals due to the amount of data managed, transferred, or stored on servers and devices. It is up to healthcare providers to ensure strict data protection policies failure to which comes with hefty fines and penalties. That said, let’s take a look at some of the best ways to ensure cybersecurity in healthcare.
Using Strong Passwords
Access control is vital in bolstering cybersecurity in healthcare as it restricts access to sensitive patient data to parties with authorization. Access control focuses on user authentication to ensure that only authorized users can access patient healthcare information. There are various ways to validate user identity, with the common one being the use of passwords.
Passwords combine unique letters, numbers, or symbols to create a security key required to access specific data from a system. Weak passwords are a vulnerability as hackers can easily guess them if they are too obvious to gain access to healthcare systems.
It is recommended to use strong passwords, which combine a string of special characters, numbers, or letters, to safeguard patient data and systems. Ensure that your system has a password checker that confirms the password strength before implementing its use.
Data Encryption
Data encryption involves the use of encoded messages that unauthorized parties can’t easily interpret. The encoded information is only accessible through the provision of a decryption key by an authorized user. Data encryption comes in two forms, namely, symmetric keys and asymmetric keys.
Symmetric keys use one key for encryption and decryption. Asymmetric keys combine two keys, public and private keys, with the public key used for encryption and the private key for decryption.
Data encryption allows easy and safe data transfer between devices and servers where data is more vulnerable. This way, even if the data is intercepted, it would be useless to the hacker without the key required for decoding the information.
Secured Servers for Databases
Databases are a hot button for hackers due to the amount of sensitive and private healthcare information. First, ensure your database’s security by installing a firewall that prevents unauthorized access to traffic. The firewall only allows traffic from authorized web applications or other servers.
Additionally, implementing a web application firewall prevents database corruption and siphoning through attacks such as SQL Injection. This way, you can prevent a database attack through a web application with authorized traffic.
It would be best to monitor database access and audit all incoming and outgoing activities. Check for anomalies by reviewing logs to monitor all attempted and successful logins into the system. This way, you can quickly realize when the database has been compromised and take the necessary security measures.
Always ensure that there is a backup for all information stored on your healthcare servers. This way, you can mitigate data loss from hacking or data corruption to prevent significant losses and non-compliance. It would be best to adapt robust healthcare data protection for compliance with security regulations and substantiate business activities with third-parties.
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