Discusing Why Hospitals Need Security Against Cyber Attacks (Essay Sample)

Need For Cybercecurity in Hospitals
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Electronic Health Record (HER) has revolutionized the health sector; however, it brings along a considerable peril: data insecurity risk. More patients are predisposed to danger of unknown gravity as healthcare facilities seek to digitalize health records to facilitate personalized treatment. The risks emanate from, among others, automation of clinical systems, antiqued EMR and clinical applications, ease of internal and external data distribution, and changing nature of risks (Bell & Ebert, 2015). Hospitals need a robust and reliable data security system for real-time protection and prevention of future malicious infiltrations.
Over the recent past, disconcerting information security trends have only continued to plague healthcare industry. According to Bell and Ebert’s (2015) report, four in every five healthcare professionals and patients have suffered the compromising effect of cyber-attack on their information technology. Putting this into perspective, Protenus & DataBreaches (2017) revealed that more than one security breaches per day in 2016 affected medical data of at least 27 million patients in the U.S. alone. Daily violation of security protocols in place points to the fact that the present system is not resilient in the face of the evolving landscape and depth of cyber threats. This development is terrifying, and proactive countermeasures to restore the diminishing confidence in the information system of the sector are long overdue.
Consequences of cyber-attack in the health sector are growing increasingly grave each day. Medical data is highly sensitive, and a breach of security jeopardizes the safety of the victims. When attackers infiltrate confidential patient health records, the magnitude of damage can be unprecedentedly overwhelming given the unlimited range of ill...