Department of Health: Digital Health Cyber Security Summit


Posted: 03/29/2019
Category: Department of Health


On Monday March 3, NYACP participated in the second meeting of the Department of Health (DOH) sponsored Digital Health Cyber Security Summit. This workgroup is a joint venture between the State government, various healthcare entities from across the state, and professional associations.  The goal of this group is to devise best practices for cybersecurity in healthcare.

According to DOH officials, there were as many cyberattacks on healthcare organizations in the first 10 days of March 2019 as there were between January and March in 2018. This is due to the immense collection of data held by hospitals and insurance companies.

Billing and insurance information can be used for identity theft and fraud, while personal medical information can be used for blackmail or targeted phishing scams. This is in addition to patient safety issues that can arise when electronic health record systems are down.

At this meeting, the participants divided into three work groups, each with specific goals for addressing an identified area of the cybersecurity threat. The working groups included:

Incident Reporting: work on the process by which healthcare organizations can work with the state to manage cybersecurity breakdowns should they arise.

Cross Sector Engagement: work on how healthcare organizations can communicate common threats to provide a collaborative approach to cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity Toolkit: provide resources by which healthcare organizations of all sizes can prepare for cyber threats including best practices for vendor selection, cyber-hygiene, testing of cybersecurity capabilities, and buying cybersecurity insurance.

NYACP's role in this collaboration is to generate and disseminate resources which will allow practices to easily address their cybersecurity needs, assess areas which could use improvement, and make practices familiar with the existing support infrastructure available when a cybersecurity threat arises. While our Executive Director serves on this workgroup,  any member that would like to be considered for this workgroup should contact Heather Bennett at hbennett@nyacp.org.

Stay tuned for future editions of YCIA for more updates from this workgroup.





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