Even Medical Records Can Be Hacked

More and more personal information is being kept online. There are several benefits for this. Primarily it makes it easier for your health information to be available to other doctors and hospitals quickly. If something were to happen while you were in a separate state the hospital you are at can get your medical records quickly to see any possible allergies or complications you may have had in the past. However, as there are benefits, there is also a pretty big negative: security.

I had my hospital information potentially stolen. I attended Texas A&M during 2006-2008. In 2007, I was admitted to the hospital. I had never thought about my information being in jeopardy when I was admitted. In 2010, I received a letter from the hospital that my information may have been compromised in a hack of the system. They could not be sure what information had been stolen The first thought that occurred to me is what type of information could they had stolen. Medical records contain social security numbers, home addresses and obviously medical history.

This forced me to watch my credit reports to make sure that no one had stolen my identity. This made me think as to how much of a problem this is. In fact, doing some research I found an article: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3090566/healthcare-it/hackers-are-coming-for-your-healthcare-records-heres-why.html showing just how often these breaches can occur. In the article there was this image attached:

As you can see, the compromise of medical information has steadily been growing. More emphasis needs to be placed on protecting medical data to prevent valuable information being stolen.