Breaches resulting from lost or stolen electronic medical record (EMR) servers or backups are usually less likely than breaches from loss or theft of mobile devices. However, searching on “server” or “backup” in Health and Human Services published data on Breaches 500 or More Individuals shows that these types of breaches have occurred many times in recent years.

When these types of breaches do occur they often have a much higher business impact than breaches resulting from loss or theft of a mobile device. This is because server or backup breaches often involve records for all of the patients in the EMR, rather than a small subset of patient records stored on a mobile device, for example for patients a healthcare worker will visit on a particular day. The Ponemon 2011 Cost of a Data Breach Study shows that the average total cost of a breach in 2011 was $5.5 million USD. Clearly a staggering cost for any healthcare organization.

These types of risks can be effectively mitigated using encryption on EMR databases and backups. However, activating encryption on databases adds significant additional computational overhead that can noticeably degrade performance of the EMR, the healthcare worker user experience and productivity, and ultimately the quality of patient care. Accelerating encryption on databases running on Xeon processors using Intel AES-NI (Advanced Encryption Standard – New Instructions) can offload most of the additional encryption and decryption overhead, enabling strong encryption security to avoid breaches, while also preserving performance and enabling a great healthcare user experience, productivity, and improved quality of patient care.

For more about encryption performance of InterSystems Cache database and the benefits of Intel AES-NI, including the use of new Multi-Buffer capability for interleaved encryption of multiple data blocks, see the whitepaper High Performance Encryption for Electronic Health Record Databases.

To find out more about encryption overhead and the benefits of Intel AES-NI in an Epic Systems Corporation Reporting Solution using an Oracle database see the whitepaper Encrypt Healthcare Data with Performance Using Intel® Xeon® Processors.

What questions do you have?

Healthcare and Life Sciences are currently challenged with multiple major trends including EHR, HIE, BYOD IT (Bring Your Own Device – Information Technology), Big Data IT, social media, advanced threats, and increasingly complex regulations. These promise compelling benefits, but also bring significant privacy and security risk. Concurrently, breaches have reached alarming levels of frequency and business impact. Healthcare trends including BYOD and social medial are empowering healthcare workers with more tools than ever before to deliver great patient healthcare, but these tools also bring non-compliance issues and additional risk.

That's why you should take 20 minutes and check out this concise, on-demand webinar, Data Security in Healthcare: A Foundational Approach

This webinar from Intel and Dell SecureWorks discusses practical strategies and best practices as a foundational approach to use privacy and security as an enabler to embrace healthcare trends safely, realizing the benefits while minimizing risk of security incidents such as breaches. The importance of delivering strong security while enabling a great healthcare worker user experience is key to user acceptance of security, compliance, and avoiding healthcare workers being compelling to use alternatives that bring additional risk.

Future technical security safeguards will increasingly be implemented as services and software that are vertically integrated with hardware assisted security for both stronger security and an improved user experience. Key technical safeguards are discussed including encryption, 2-factor authentication, anti-malware, IDS / IPS, IAM, anti-theft / remote lock and wipe, and DLP. This hardware assisted security, that is security hardware embedded in client and server processors, will serve to accelerate, harden, improve usability and reduce the cost of security solutions for healthcare. Administrative tools including policy, procedures, risk assessments, training and audit and compliance are also discussed as key safeguards within a holistic approach to ensure robust privacy and security.

Where are you seeing challenges with your healthcare workers user experience with security, and what kinds of alternative BYOD, social media or other tools are they using that drive non-compliance issues and additional risk?