Many hospitals transmit your health records unencrypted
About 32% of hospitals and 52% of non-acute providers — such as outpatient clinics, rehabilitation facilities and physicians’ offices — are not encrypting data in transit, according to a new survey.
Additionally, only 61% of acute providers and 48% of non-acute providers are encrypting data at rest.
This “leaves the door wide open to potential tampering and corruption of the data, in addition to a large potential for a breach,” the report stated. “If a computer, laptop, thumb drive, or backup were to be stolen, any person would be able to access such information.”
HIMSSThe survey, conducted by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), a Chicago-based trade group for the health information technology sector, also revealed that many of the facilities’ networks don’t even have firewalls.
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