Assignment 2: HIT Security Breaches Research Proposal

Healthcare companies hold a large amount of a customer's private information from social security numbers and bank information to medical records. As such, we as customers would hope that these companies are protecting our information. However, there is always a risk for data breaches to occur. When discussing data breaches in the healthcare industry, there are three main points to consider, what is the cause of the data breach, what is the cost of the breach, and what can be done to prevent this breach from happening again. As someone who cares about who has access to my information, I find each of those three points important. If a data breach were to occur, I want to know what information was possibly exposed, how it was exposed, and what is being done to correct it and prevent it from happening again. I also care about the cost of the security breach because that cost will eventually come down on the customers in one way or another.

You might be thinking, why would a hacker go after my healthcare data, why not go after my bank information or my identity, isn't it money they're after? You might be surprised to learn that 1 in 3 Americans were victims of a healthcare data breach according to the Bitglass 2016 Healthcare Breach Report. This statistic was surprising for me because it illustrated just how many people were effected by healthcare data breaches. During my research, I learned that data breaches can occur in any number of ways. Data can be exposed for any reason from hackers to patient files falling from a vehicle transporting the files to be incinerated. Another fact I found particularly intriguing was the average cost per file for healthcare security breaches. Globally, the average cost of healthcare data breaches is 355$ per record. From the initial research that I have done into this topic, it is clear that healthcare data breaches are extremely common, costly, and are happening at an increased rate.

Through further research, I would like to learn more about what is being done to prevent data breaches from occurring. I would like to learn more about the specific types of data breaches that effect healthcare companies. This includes the smaller data breaches that don't make it into healthcare IT news. In my opinion, it seems as if Healthcare companies are not doing enough to protect customer's information. It can appear this way due to just how many healthcare records are exposed on average per month as well as that healthcare data breaches are happening more frequently. Largely, this is not even due to healthcare companies greatest asset and liability, their employees.

The majority of data breaches are a result of hacks. As such, healthcare company's network security is one of my biggest concerns. If an employee's company account is breached, that counts as a security breach. It is important that companies make a reasonable effort to prevent this and other such data breaches from occurring. Another area I would like to gain further research on is the cost of these preventative measures. The biggest cost of a security breach is loss of business. However, is the cost of a particular preventative measure higher than the cost of the security breach? If so, are companies choosing profit over the security of my information?