August 22, 2016
About 32% of hospitals and 52% of non-acute providers — such as outpatient clinics, rehabilitation facilities and physicians’ offices — are not encrypting data in transit, according to a new survey.
Additionally, only 61% of acute providers and 48% of non-acute providers are encrypting data at rest.
This “leaves the door wide open to potential tampering and corruption of the data, in addition to a large potential for a breach,” the report stated. “If a computer, laptop, thumb drive, or backup were to be stolen, any person would be able to access such information.”
he survey, conducted by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), a Chicago-based trade group for the health information technology sector, also revealed that many of the facilities’ networks don’t even have firewalls.
“The results are surprising,” the HIMSS report stated, because only 78% of acute care facilities (healthcare systems and hospitals) and 90% of non-acute facilities are using firewalls; some 85% of acute care facilities and 90% of non-acute providers are using antivirus and anti-malware software.