Healthcare data should be private- Know why?

What can someone do with your name, address, disease, and your details? There are billions of people on the planet earth… If you think that, you should be worried. 

 

The data is the new oil, it makes you rich. How can you details be misused, the article writes about it.

It is very normal to give your details and ignore about the security of private details.  People think that usually online data which is related to the credit or debit card can be hacked, but do you know that the medical data fetches up to 10 times the price that stolen credit cards.

120 million Indian’s data is ‘freely’ available on Internet, according to the Greenbone Report.  

 

The GreenBone Sustaiable Resilience is a German Cyber Security Firm which has published a report about Indian patients data leak. It has started publishing the report since 2019 of October.  

Greenbone published a widespread data leak of a massive number of records, including images of CT scans, X-rays, MRIs and pictures of patients.

Where is the leak done?

Greenbone’s original report says the leak was facilitated by the fact that the Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) servers, where these details are stored, are not secure and linked to the public Internet without any protection, making them easily accessible to malicious elements.

The security of data has become a critical issue for the healthcare industry.

The high value of medical records on the dark web has surpassed that of social security and credit card numbers.

The data can be highly profitable.

What are threats?

By having the healthcare information, for example sexually transmitted disease or terminal illness, the information can be used to extort or coerce someone to do what you want them to do.

Documents that would let someone pretend to be a doctor or other legit healthcare provider.

Health insurance cards, prescriptions and drug labels, with these someone can forge a prescription.

What is even more worrying is that the number of data troves containing this sensitive data went up by a significant number in the Indian context a month after Greenbone’s initial report was published.

There is a list given of states which publishes the data of health care.

The report which was published in November, classified countries in the category of the

-         Good

-         Bad

-         And ugly

India ranked second in ugly, after the United States.

The report says that in 60 days after the first report was put out, the number of data troves bearing the patients’ information went up from 6,27,000 to 1.01 million, and that the images of patients’ details rose from 105 million to 121 million.

It is a notable fact for the systems located in India, that almost 100% of the studies (data troves) allow full access to related images,” the report states.

“The leak is worrying because the affected patients can include anyone from the common working man to politicians and celebrities. In image-driven fields like politics or entertainment, knowledge about certain ailments faced by people from these fields could deal a huge blow to their image. The other concern is of fake identities being created using the details, which can be misused in any possible number of ways,”

 Any communication between a doctor and a patient was privileged one. 
A doctor or a hospital is thus ethically, legally and morally bound to maintain confidentiality.