Surprise, Surprise- Humans are a Data Security Nightmare

Otherwise known as employee negligence, most organizations still feel as though human error is their top threat to information security (cyber criminals came in second). While humans can’t be error-proofed any more than technology can, there are a few steps you can take to help your workforce, customers and vendors keep your organization and its data secure. There’s no foolproof, 110% secure solution (yet), but here’s a good place to start.

In a recent report from the Ponemon Institute, 70 percent of the healthcare organizations and business associates surveyed identified employee negligence as a top threat to information security. And an article earlier this year in Federal Times noted that “Every survey of IT professionals and assessment of cybersecurity posture shows at least 50 percent of breaches and leaks are directly attributable to user error or failure to practice proper cyber hygiene.” Now, to anyone who’s been paying attention for the last decade or so, it will come as no surprise that people make mistakes that cause data breaches. To err is human, and that is not going to change. What has changed, is the scope of damage resulting from these errors. A decade ago, a lost laptop or improperly discarded paper records might expose hundreds or even thousands of people to a potential data breach. Today, with massive digitization of medical information, mobile data usage, and massive system integration, everyday human errors can cause data breaches that expose millions of people to potential harm. To cite just one example, InfoWorld and CSO reported that the 80 million-record Anthem data breach was probably caused when thieves infiltrated Anthem’s system using a database administrator password captured through a phishing scheme.
In this series on medical data, we’ve looked at the many new places healthcare information is being exposed (Medical Data Everywhere: Health Revolution or Time Bomb?), from medical devices (Medjacking: The Newest Healthcare Risk?) to the cloud (Danger in the Cloud) [link to third article]. In this final article in the series, we’ll look at how human error can put that entire universe of information at risk and review some approaches to combat the risks of human error.

You can read the full article here: The Biggest Threat to Data Security? Humans, Of Course