cybersecurity Archives - Page 6 of 8

HHS Task Group Releases Cybersecurity Guidelines for the Health Care Industry

Health care is one of the most complex and socially impactful areas of digitalization. Ensuring cybersecurity of health care operations, therefore, is of paramount importance – because potential vulnerabilities may lead not only to financial or technical exposures, but to lapses in life-or-death situations for patients.

To assist practitioners with education and guidelines, and in pursuance of Cybersecurity Act of 2015 (Public Law 114-113), Section 405(d), the Department of Health and Human Services created a “405(d) Task Group” in May 2017, involving, more than 150 health care and cybersecurity experts. The result of their collaborative work became a voluntary guideline entitled “Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices: Managing Threats and Protecting Patients,” which was released at the end of 2018.

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House Committee Staff Report Finds Equifax Data Breach Entirely Preventable, Provides Recommendations for Consumer Reporting Agencies

After a 14-month investigation into the 2017 Equifax data breach, which was one the largest in U.S. history, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report in December.

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New Handbook Provides Guidance to Healthcare Delivery Organizations on Preparation and Response to Medical Device Cybersecurity Incidents

Recently, the MITRE Corporation, in collaboration with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), announced the release of the Medical Device Cybersecurity Regional Incident Preparedness and Response Playbook. The Playbook was designed to provide “tools, references, and resources” for Healthcare Delivery Organizations (HDOs) to better prepare for and respond to medical device cybersecurity incidents.

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Cybersecurity Responsibilities of a Plan Sponsor

Plan sponsors of retirement plans handle a lot personal participant data, but many are unaware of their fiduciary duties in the context of cybersecurity. If a retirement plan suffers a cyberattack, plan assets could be diverted and misused. Under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), the plan sponsor could be held liable for a fiduciary breach for failure to satisfy a duty of loyalty and to act prudently.

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Digital Medicine: Health Care Providers’ Side of the Story

Health care technology, particularly digital medicine, promises great new capabilities that will improve outcomes and reduce overall costs and time constraints. Digital medicine encompasses a broad-range of technologies, from technologies used to record, retain, and manipulate health data (i.e., Electronic Health Records aka., EHRs) and thereby make it more useable and amenable to analysis; to actual tools in clinical care (i.e., medical imaging, wearable sensors) that can measure physiological parameters or patient activity and facilitate clinical care and decision-making.

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Federal IT Modernization Report Recommendations

This post is part of a continuing DBR on Data series on Executive Order 13800 and updates on its implementation a year after passage.

Strengthening federal information technology (IT) has been one of the priorities of the current administration, as outlined in the May 2017 Executive Order 13800. As summarized in our previous blog, the Director of the American Technology Council (ATC) was tasked, among other things, to coordinate the preparation of a report to the president regarding modernization of federal IT infrastructure. The draft report was made available for public comment in August, and finalized in December 2017. The final report’s implementation clock started on January 1, 2018.

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DISCERNING DATA

A Faegre Drinker Blog Covering the Latest in Privacy, Cybersecurity and Data Strategy

Tag: cybersecurity