The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a cybersecurity guideline for the healthcare industry. The guideline released is voluntary cybersecurity practice aimed to provide cost-effective solutions to security risks. The “Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices (HCIP): managing threats and protecting patients” guideline is aimed to provide healthcare organizations with effective steps to reduce security risks and for facilities of all sizes.
The Cybersecurity Act of 2015 section 405(d) is an industry-led effort to develop a practical cybersecurity guideline to provide cost-effective solutions for the healthcare industry. The act was developed to protect the patient healthcare information to reduce threats by following certain guidelines.
The HHS has issued the guideline after undergoing thorough research over the period of two-years that effectively brought together 150 cybersecurity and healthcare experts. The experts were specially chosen from various industries and government organizations to form a Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) sector critical infrastructure security and resilience public-private partnership.
Healthcare field is barraged by the development of new life-saving treatments and improving patient care. Such kinds of technologies are vulnerable to security threats from hackers to even tech-developers. Such technologies can be exploited to gain access to different types of personal information making the total healthcare system vulnerable to attack. The guideline can act as an effective handbook for the healthcare care facilities to maintain the decorum of data.