Data breaches are preventable. Here’s how a health exec can safeguard health data.

Healthcare is an intensely data-driven industry, and the volume of patient data — clinical, financial, demographic — has grown exponentially in recent years. The evolution from fee-for-service to value-based care, with its emphasis on the continuum of care and interoperability, bring the need for providers to share and aggregate from multiple stakeholders at multiple access points.

Unfortunately, that expanded access has spawned more opportunities for targeted assaults on data networks. Sometimes, data are compromised or stolen because healthcare entities neglected to take proper care of it or due to significant events such as the COVID-19 pandemic that increased the need to exchange large amounts of patient information.

Smaller healthcare stakeholders have their own particular cybersecurity challenges. Although they may handle less data than their larger brethren, smaller stakeholders often lack the budget and/or in-house or consulting expertise to manage a cybersecurity team that can diagnose data vulnerabilities and implement remedies for them.

Steve Crummey is Chairman, CyVision Technologies, Inc.

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