Health: the ever-present risk of hacking and data leaks

Health information is subject to many security risks:  hacking, connected devices vulnerable to cyber-attacks, human negligence, etc. At a time when portable devices are becoming increasingly widespread, it is more important than ever for healthcare professionals to counter these threats. Mobile practices by medical professionals have become yet another risk factor, since it is easy for a tablet or smartphone to be stolen, lost, or hacked.
But even without malicious intent, data leaks can often result from human negligence and a poor grasp of security issues, such as the French Health Ministry’s use of non-approved data hosts.

A strict legislative framework for health information

The protection of personal medical information is governed in France by long-standing laws based on medical confidentiality and respect for privacy; healthcare professionals must take every precaution to prevent this health information from being changed (data integrity), accidentally deleted (data availability), or accessed by unauthorized persons (data confidentiality). 

Within this strict framework, a failure to meet these legal obligations or negligence in implementing the required measures (related to storage, technical security, or unauthorized sharing of health information with third parties) can trigger the application of deterrent, even harsh, criminal penalties.

Healthcare professionals are required to implement:

• physical security measures: controlling access to the premises where the servers are hosted, with procedures restricting access to authorized persons only;
• technical measures: protecting the servers that host the data with firewalls, spam filters, and anti-virus software; encrypting the data when an internet connection is used, etc. ;
•  human measures: protecting access to workstations with frequently changed individual passwords, requiring medical personnel to show their Healthcare Professional card to access data, etc.

Healthcare establishments, meanwhile, are required to achieve Certification V¬IV from the French National Authority for Health (HAS) and the prerequisites for the Digital Hospital Project (Projet Hôpital Numérique):

• Level of security and business continuity plan (naturally, a hospital cannot afford to lose data or stop operations);
• Confidentiality, patient identities and movements;
• Incident Recovery Plan....

Wooxo guarantees secure solutions for using and backing up health information

With professionals exchanging ultra-sensitive data, the healthcare sector is subject to major security risks. This dependency on digital technology should not call into question the use of health information, but rather serve as encouragement to devise and design customized solutions for securely backing up health information, especially with the large volumes to be managed, and for ensuring business continuity after a major incident.
Wooxo helps medical professionals protect and securely use health information, offering hosting services that comply with the Digital Hospital Project requirements (V4 Certification from HAS), with a turnkey, 100% local and automated backup solution to protect patient files against all risks and maintain medical confidentiality while ensuring continuity of IT services 24/7 in case of a major incident.

For healthcare professionals, these secure health information backup solutions guarantee:

• Confidentiality, and respect for medical confidentiality
• Compliance (V4 Certification from HAS)
• 24/7 business continuity
• Protection against all risk of fire, flood, or theft
• Elimination of human error and reduced costs
• A solution suitable for groups of European establishments
• Traceable backups
• An Incident Recovery Plan
• Guaranteed interoperability within a group of establishments
• Optimized storage volumes