Introduction
Around the world, doctor’s offices are now modernized with computers storing patient digital records, appointments and payment information. With technology being incorporated into healthcare, sharing data with multiple doctors at different locations or within the hospital is very common. However, with the digitization of patient data, no healthcare provider wants to be part of headlines regarding health care data breaches. By ensuring that the patient’s data is encrypted, healthcare service providers can ensure that sensitive information about patients’ health is secured.
Cyber Attacks on the Healthcare industry
For the last few years, hackers have constantly targeted healthcare services to steal all the data related to patients, healthcare sales, and pharma. Most of these hacking attempts were made through brute force attacks on the server or by sending malicious e-mails, which made the system vulnerable. Doctors and their offices hold a lot of sensitive data. They maintain database of not just the PII but also the health conditions, current medications and at times insurance coverage details. What if patients’ data gets stolen in the cyberattack or there is a loss of hard drive storing the data.
All these details are critical for the patient and can lead to personal harm if in the hands of the wrong person. A total of 39 high profile data breaches occurred only for a month in 2020 alone in the healthcare industry, which costed a total of $6 trillion for the industry. These attacks are increasing year on year with the rise of digitization and database management. Hence, globally regulations like HIPAA have been introduced to safeguard the patients’ data.
Family medicine practitioners to speciality surgeons refer the patient data to other doctors for consultation, treatments, and case examples, where the threat of data leaks is the most. What if an employee at doctor’s office clicks on a malicious e-mail and all health records for the patient and healthcare unit are stolen? Additionally, the doctors store their data in drives, which if lost can cause financial and reputation loss to the doctor.
Data Encryption for Doctors
Data encryption is one of the best ways for a doctor to be assured that hackers cannot use the data even if they manage to breach it. Encryption allows the user to convert the entire data into a format that a human user cannot read without the secret key. Only those who have the secret key can access the data. Doctors have data stored in varying formats calling for encryption across them. These include:
- Data stored in hard disk, USBs, or any other removable media, often referred to as data at rest. These if access by users other than the intended recipients can cause a disastrous effect.
- Sharing information via emails to hospitals, patients, pharma companies. The receptiveness in the data and the attached value makes it a potential of cyberattack. Data breach on such sensitive information can cause harm to both doctors and the recipients of the data.
- Data stored as files or folders on the system which maintain inventory, patient records, doctor’s and patient’s financial details are essential for patient care and normal functioning of the clinic. Data hacked at this level can disrupt the entire operation of clinic.
Cryptainer Equipping the Doctors in Data Protection
In some countries, doctors need to have data protection software complying with AES encryption technology. Absence of this, can result in huge penalties at the doctor’s end. Cypherix’s data protection software – Cryptainer Pro comes with AES and Blowfish technology. The data encryption software is easy-to-use and involves only a drag-and-drop mechanism which saves time of the user, thus allowing the doctor or their employees to focus on their other priorities. Cryptainer Pro supports all the versions of Windows and hence does not call for additional investment on the OS front.
Easy Access
Cryptainer Pro creates a virtual disk of the data when encrypted and the disk can only be opened if you have the secret key. Thus, as a doctor you need not set individual security for individual files or folders. You can drag and drop all the data into one vault and set the password as per your needs. The data protection software enables you to work on the disk with a simple user-interface. Functions like cut, copy, paste, new file/folder creation are features which can be used within the encrypted drive.
Flexibility
Cryptainer Pro lets you operate without any restrictions. Doctor and their staff can encrypt files in the format of word, excel, photo, audio, videos, etc. The virtual drive appears in the “My Computer Folder” within Windows Explorer. Once the virtual drive gets loaded, as a user doctors or their office managers can drag and drop as many files as they want. All these files are then encrypted on a single click.
Saves Time
Cryptainer Pro is able to encrypt data irrespective of the file size in seconds. The size of the data at a doctor’s clinic is variable. Reports, recordings of sonography, CT scan, MRI can be heavy in size. The data encryption software encrypts the file in minutes without compromising the productivity of the system.
Encryption Beyond Data on System
Identity theft and fraud cases have risen wherein data picked up from USBs, removable media have been misused. Cryptainer Pro let’s doctors encrypt their backups. As a user you can create multiple volume files on removable media folders like USBs, floppy disks, CDs, Pen Drives, etc. Thus, the backups of the files stores on the system too are encrypted, offering a complete security.
Consequences of Not Encrypting Data
Doctors and their staff can be the next victim of cyberattack via computers, email, or physical theft. Doctors who avoid implementing data encryption can not only be subject to fines in case of a data breach but also face huge reputational loss. In case of a cyberattack, the clinic loses the patient as well as the doctor’s data. Hackers may hold the data until the ransom amount is paid. Hence the cost of cyberattack is not just the ransom paid but added to the amount is the reputation loss and the time and effort incurred to build the data.
Conclusion
Encryption software is the healthcare industry’s need; without it, every patient’s data would be at risk. Using the Cryptainer Pro software will ensure that the data is not at risk, even when hackers can access the data. With an easy-to-use method, doctors can secure their data from cyberattack and physical theft. Built on best-in-class compliant technology, Cryptainer Pro offers unbreakable algorithm for its users.
- Protect
- Secure
- Cypherix
