The Insider: A True Story Exposes the Threat That Insider Data Leaks Pose to Healthcare and Biotech Industries
Author Dan Verton Warns That Lack of Adherence to Security Standards Can Spawn Malicious Insider and Legal Liability Problems
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 8, 2005—In his new book The Insider: A True Story, author and security expert Dan Verton investigates the issue of security violations by insiders in the healthcare and biotech industries. Patients expect that their personal healthcare information will be kept private and confidential, yet Verton’s research reveals that the networks of healthcare organizations and practitioners are frequently the source of information leaks. He also reveals the threat that data theft by malicious insiders poses to the biotech industry and discusses the latest security developments designed to prevent information leaks and theft by insiders. The Insider: A True Story, published by Llumina Press, is available from on-line retailers such as www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com and at bookstores across the U.S.
Verton leads with a discussion of the security provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which makes healthcare providers liable if they do not adhere to its security standards for protecting patient data. The Insider: A True Story argues that HIPAA’s language regarding security is weak and confusing, and that the lack of standards throughout the healthcare and health insurance industries puts patient information at risk of compromise by insiders. The book also profiles several cases where medical researchers in academia and the biotech industry have stolen proprietary data for financial gain.
"Advances in networking have greatly improved the ability of doctors, researchers, and scientists to interact and share information on diseases and potential treatments, but they also enable insiders to maliciously or inadvertently transmit a person’s most private data," said Verton. "In addition, the risk of personal DNA data leaking out looms on the horizon. Some private DNA testing companies now claim to store tens of thousands of DNA samples, and leaks could lead to a tidal wave of discrimination by insurers, employees, and others based what DNA reveals about a person’s potential health problems."
Sensitive Data Requires Strong ProtectionThe Insider: A True Story concludes its discussion of the insider security threat to healthcare and biotech industries with information gleaned from risk assessments performed by the Reconnex iGuard content-monitoring security appliance from Reconnex Corporation. The Reconnex iGuard has the unprecedented ability to analyze all network traffic and content leaving a network to determine what information is at risk and who it transmitting it.
"Reconnex has performed risk assessments at a number of healthcare and biotech companies, and we have routinely identified violations of policies regarding confidential information, governance, and HIPAA," said Donald J. Massaro, the founder and CEO of Reconnex. "These findings have increased healthcare and biotech CIOs’ awareness of the need to protect the privacy of confidential information, as well as the fact that the technology now exists to solve these issues. There is now greater adoption of risk management technologies, such as Reconnex’s iGuard, which are enabling these companies to ensure the highest level of protection against the unauthorized leaking of their patients’ confidential information."
About Dan VertonIn addition to The Insider: A True Story, Dan Verton wrote the highly acclaimed book Black Ice: The Invisible Threat of Cyber-Terrorism (McGraw-Hill, 2003), endorsed by some of the nation’s top experts as one of the best descriptions of the terrorist threat to critical cyber infrastructure to date. He has presented his research on cyber-terrorism to the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Secret Service, The Air Force War College, and to other organizations as well as to colleges and universities. Verton is former Marine Corps intelligence officer.
About Reconnex
Reconnex is the leading provider of enterprise risk management (ERM) systems that reveal and address the insider threat to compliance risks, competitive risks, corporate governance risks and critical infrastructure risks. Reconnex enables Fortune 1000 companies, government organizations, and smaller healthcare and financial services companies to protect their brands, shareholder value and mission critical operations by revealing hidden risks in the first 48 hours of deployment. Without exception, every deployment has enabled these organizations to quickly remediate the risks that could have damaged or destroyed their organization.
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