Improving Healthcare’s Security Posture

Healthcare’s Security Posture

As part of my interview series from BlackHat I spoke with Mike Weber VP Coalfire Labs – they are a large Cybersecurity Systems provider focused on securing transactions in the cloud working with all if not most of the cloud providers. Coalfire just released their Penetration Risk Report that included a special section on Healthcare. Not surprisingly the news wasn’t good showing that healthcare had the worst “External Posture” with the least security for anything that can be seen by an attacker – external facing systems such as routers, firewalls etc.

The biggest issue was with legacy systems and many instances upgrades installed but the legacy and unsecured systems remain in use.

Listen in to the interview and hear Mike’s thoughts on Incremental Steps to combat the Security challenges faced in healthcare. As he and others have pointed out Medical records are high risk because they have such a long shelf life offering a rich vein to exploit for anyone able to steal these records.

 

Incremental Steps for Improving Healthcare’s Security Posture

 

• Upgrade Old Systems and Importantly plan retirement for old systems as part of the upgrade
• Consolidated Your audit program to Decrease Audit Fatigue
• Prioritize Your “Crown Jewel’s” of the data and Systems you are protecting

Here’s the short list:

1. Personal data is the top target (highest value) – medical identity information has a smaller market
2. Platform Access – and the ability to install ransomware
3. Encrypt everything

Improving Healthcare’s Security Posture was originally published on Dr Nick – The Incrementalist

Incremental Steps to Health

This week I am talking to Dr Khan Siddiqui (@DrKhan ) radiologist, programmer, serial entrepreneur, and Founder, CTO, and CMO of HIGI – the company that is taking the concepts of consumer engagement and tracking to the next level and creating actionable insights that patients and their care team can use

Much of Khan’s journeys mirrors my journey into the space of Digital Health – starting as a programmer in school where he was building applications on a PDB-11 using punch cards and continuing on through his early work on the Electronic Health Record mining data and applying machine learning and deep learning as far back as 2005 to healthcare data.

Microsoft Kinect

Listen to his story of a turnabout of shared innovation at Microsoft where the work the healthcare team had done on image analytics was applied to the Kinect bar and gaming solving one of the challenging problems of “missing body parts”

He was involved in the early work of Microsoft Health Vault and like others believed in the mission of sharing clinical data with patients and getting them engaged was a key requirement to solving health challenges – many of which are tied up with personal behavior. Frustrated by the lack of uptake compared to the Xbox gaming system he took this experience with him to found Higi and replicate the gaming user engagement and bring this to healthcare

Listen in to gain a different perspective to Xbox gaming and how healthcare has contributed and learned from this world.

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Incremental Steps to Health was originally published on Dr Nick – The Incrementalist

Flu and Flu Vaccination

Flu Season is Approaching

This week we are focusing on the Flu and the Flu Vaccination

What is the Flu

What is flu and how does it differ from a common cold. It’s a highly contagious viral illness that does not respond to antibiotics and changes every year and infects between 5-20% of the population every year and kills anywhere from 3000 to 49,000 each year and far worse worldwide based on a recent Lancet Study that estimates deaths up to 650,000 vs Previous 250-500k

In the US the uptake of the Flu vaccination is a little over 40% in adults and a little higher in children from 6 months – 17 years at around 59%

For anyone aged 6 months and older getting your flu vaccination or shot is the best thing you can do to prevent catching the flu this winter based on your own personal health status and not having any contraindications to receiving the flu shot. Getting your  shot also contributes to the “Community Immunity” – better known as Herd Immunity:

Why Community or Herd Immunity is Important

Listen in to find out why you need to get your flu vaccination each and every year and

 

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Flu and Flu Vaccination was originally published on Dr Nick – The Incrementalist

Is Aspirin Good for Preventing Heart Disease?

 

Is Aspirin Good for Preventing Heart Disease?

Aspirin

This week we are focusing on Aspirin. A drug that’s been around for thousands of years going back to the Egyptians. It has some clear uses for getting rid of pain, reducing fever and decreasing inflammation but we have found other benefits as well. It is used as an emergency treatment for anyone thought to be suffering from a heart attack – chewable and full dose aspirin if possible, and for some time, the general medical guidance has been giving a baby or low dose aspirin to help prevent heart attacks.

But that guidance has been called into question with the release of a new study: Aspirin to reduce the risk of initial vascular events in patients at moderate risk of cardiovascular disease (or ARRIVE for short)

Incremental Steps in Deciding if Aspirin is Right for You

This week’s Incremental step – educate yourself on the background of Aspirin and its use for prevention in heart disease and then if you fall into any of the potential risk categories for heart disease book an appointment to discuss aspirin as part of your healthplan

 

As the Arrive Paper concluded:

“The use of aspirin remains a decision that should involve a thoughtful discussion between a clinician and a patient, given the need to weigh cardiovascular and possible cancer prevention benefits against the bleeding risks, patient preferences, cost, and other factors. The ARRIVE data must be interpreted and used in the context of other studies, which have tended to show a reduction primarily in myocardial infarction, with less of an effect on total stroke (including both ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke). The overall decision to use aspirin for cardiovascular effects should be done with the help a clinician, given the complex calculus needed to balance all potential benefits and risks.”

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Is Aspirin Good for Preventing Heart Disease? was originally published on Dr Nick – The Incrementalist