Data Security
Data security or information security is the process of protecting data collected by businesses for various purposes.
Healthcare is a sensitive niche where data plays an extremely major role. In case of the leakage of collected healthcare data, the businesses that have collected data will lose trust among all its stakeholders.
Healthcare data, whether it is B2B data or B2C data has to be protected not just to remain compliant with laws and regulations but protecting healthcare data is a fundamental and ethical need.
Ignoring data security in healthcare data can lead to huge penalties, and it can be a downside for brand reputation. Below are some of the major drawbacks of not protecting data from the healthcare industry.
The Drawbacks of Not Protecting Healthcare Data
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Loss of Trust
If B2B data is not protected, the healthcare organizations and other stakeholders involved with the healthcare business will lose trust, and healthcare organizations might lose their valued business partners and investors.
If B2C data is not protected by the business, customers will lose interest in the brand and there are many chances that customers can go against of the healthcare organization, and lodge complaints against misuse of data and this leads to the blacklisting of the organization.
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Violation of Business Contracts
In the healthcare industry, the majority of business contracts include data protection clauses. The leakage of data will harm both parties and hinder their growth and competitive edge. If businesses do not protect the B2B data, this leads to contractual violations, legal disputes among stakeholders, and financial liabilities.
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Legal Penalties
The healthcare industry is a competitive niche and deals with an enormous amount of sensitive data that includes both B2B data and B2C data. If the healthcare data is not secured, businesses have to face huge data penalties from the legal authorities. Businesses have to follow data security and privacy laws like GDPR, HIPAA, and other applicable laws as per the country and state.
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Misuse of Data
Data security in the healthcare industry is one of the crucial aspects businesses need to fulfill. If healthcare information is leaked or breached by cyber-attacks, it can be misused for fraudulent activities like claiming false insurance, manipulating crimes with the help of healthcare data, using it for unauthorized medical procedures, etc.
Best Practices of Data Security in the Healthcare Industry
The below best practices will help you to be risk-ready and a few precautions will aid you to effectively overcome the fear of loss of electronic health records.
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Regularly Training Staff
The first step of data security in the healthcare industry is to train the staff regularly about the safest ways of collecting and processing data. Make your staff capable of identifying potential data threats. Form a committee to regularly train new staff and keep them up-to-date about various technologies that can be used to secure healthcare data.
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Leveraging Various Data Encryption Techniques
Use various data encryption techniques in data security for the healthcare industry. Various methods like end-to-end encryption, use of Virtual Private Networks (VPN), email encryption, database encryption, full-disk encryption, etc.
Implement data security techniques according to your electronic healthcare records. Protected health information helps businesses to maintain their brand reputation and trust in the market.
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Providing Role-based Access Controls
Role-based access controls refer to providing user access to IT systems based on the roles and responsibilities of the staff. Role-based access provides permission to access the data that is needed to perform their job roles and limits access to data that is not relevant. This helps in minimizing the risk of unauthorized access.
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Robust Disaster Recovery and Data Backup Plans
Data security in the healthcare industry is a crucial aspect. Medical data that contains confidential information about healthcare professionals, patients, and other stakeholders of healthcare organizations holds great value.
It is indeed a prerequisite for businesses to build strong disaster recovery plans and data backup plans in case of data breaches, hardware failures, or human errors.
Formulate incident response plans for each of the potential disasters. Use different kinds of data backup plans and develop comprehensive DRP solutions that address every potential disaster without affecting operational efficiency.
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Classification of Data
Data classification plays an important role in securing healthcare data. Data in the healthcare industry will have a huge amount of data with different formats, sizes, and types.
Systematically classifying data according to the policies, formats, and document type, and labeling the data will help businesses to stay compliant with the regulations and minimize the risk of data breaches.
Leveraging tools for data security in the healthcare industry helps to classify data based on the level of sensitivity. So, the system triggers launches risk assessments and data prevention methods whenever the data is moved or transferred by unauthorized access, and it becomes easy to protect healthcare data.
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Frequent Security Audits
Conduct frequent security audits and keep the software, operating systems, and security tools up-to-date. Make continuous changes at certain intervals to improve security measures. Regularly assess compliance, identify security gaps, and evaluate the effectiveness of security controls.
To enhance the effectiveness of data security in the healthcare industry, leverage various risk assessment frameworks that align with the objectives and security infrastructure of your business.
Conclusion
In the era of big data, it is extremely important for businesses to protect healthcare data including B2B and B2C data. Modern-day customers are aware of how their data is being used and misused.
To sustain the business in the long run, it is inevitable for healthcare industries to protect their customer’s data. Beyond the legal and financial aspects, protecting data is an ethical way for businesses to ensure that their broader goal is to provide safe, transparent, and reliable healthcare to all individuals.