HHS Issue Best Practices for Cybersecurity
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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has issued voluntary cybersecurity best practices for healthcare organizations and guidelines for managing cyber threats and protecting patients.
Healthcare technologies are essential for providing care to patients, yet those technologies introduce risks. If those risks are not properly managed they can result in disruption to healthcare operations, costly data breaches, and harm to patients.
The HHS notes that $6.2 billion was lost by the U.S. Health Care System in 2016 as a result of data breaches and 4 out of 5 physicians in the United States have experienced some form of cyberattack. The average cost of a data breach for a healthcare organization is now $2.2 million.
The guidance and best practices – Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices (HICP): Managing Threats and Protecting Patients – were developed in response to a mandate in the Cybersecurity Act of 2015 Section 405(d) to issue practical guidelines to help healthcare organizations cost-effectively reduce healthcare cybersecurity risks.