According to the 2020 Protenus Breach Barometer, more than 41 million patient records were breached by 572 healthcare data breaches in 2019. Hacking incidents jumped 48.6% and lead to the majority of breaches while insider-related incidents decreased by 20%.
The American Medical Collection Agency fell victim to the largest data breach – more than 20 million patient records from a wide range of covered entities including Quest Diagnostics, LabCorp, BioReference, and Clinical Pathology were impacted. Sensitive information including Social Security numbers, addresses, dates of birth, and payment details were stolen and advertised for sale in underground web forums.
Unfortunately, hackers are constantly developing new ways to exploit protected health information (PHI). Today, hackers not only attempt to extort money from compromised healthcare organizations, but also breached patients. When a patient refuses to pay outrageous ransom demands, the hacker follows through on threats and publicly releases PHI on the dark web.
To mitigate hacking incidents and phishing schemes, Protenus emphasizes the importance of risk assessments and employee training. Here at etherFAX, we believe protecting corporate networks, patient data, and business-critical information starts with a secure exchange network. Healthcare organizations must implement an ecosystem that leverages defense-in-depth strategies including advanced encryption and two-factor authentication.
The etherFAX Secure Exchange Network (SEN) is the world’s largest cloud fax network, leveraging military-grade encryption and hybrid cloud technology to provide 100 percent secure communications within healthcare. DirectFax™ via etherFAX SEN enables organizations to protect and send or receive PHI directly to healthcare applications and guarantees that communications never traverse an external telephone network.
To ensure that electronic health records (EHRs), insurance information, scripts, and medical images remain secure while in transit and at rest, etherFAX SENx utilizes well-defined end-to-end encryption methods such as those defined in the Elliptic Curve Integrated Encryption Scheme (ECIES).
Ideal for medical providers, insurance companies, and pharmacies, our secure document delivery solutions are HIPAA, PCI DSS, and SOC 2 compliant. We are also in the final stages of the HITRUST CSF assessment and are working diligently in an effort to receive our HITRUST certification this year. In addition to security and compliance, etherFAX transmits high-resolution, full color documents with ultra-fast transmission speeds. For example, a 50-page, 600dpi color document can be securely delivered within seconds instead of hours.
Interested in learning more about cloud fax networks like etherFAX? Let’s chat.