According to Redspin consulting, as reported in infosecurity, the number of patient record breaches has doubled last year.
Redspin cites the increasing concentration of protected health information (PHI) on unencrypted portable devices and the lack of sufficient oversight of PHI disclosed to hospital’s business associates as the main reasons for the increase.
Here at Biscom, we’re definitely seeing an uptick in demand for our secure file transfer solution from our healthcare customers - there are serious consequences, both in terms of financial liability as well as reputation that are at stake. NIH, Mass General Hospital, Children’s Hospital, Medtronic, and many more healthcare organization trust us to transmit their PHI securely. Contact us if you’re facing similar issues – we can help!
Biscom Delivery Server is now “in process” for FIPS 140-2 certification. FIPS 140-2 (Federal Information Processing Standard) certification is a US Government security standard for accrediting cryptographic modules. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines the cryptography requirements in its FIPS 140-2 publication, and software like BDS must pass the Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP) in order to receive certification. Level 1 is geared towards software solutions, whereas level 2 is required for hardware solutions that have physical security mechanisms.
The unfortunate victims of this latest data breach of student and parent records was discovered when a mother Googled her child’s name and turned up his social security number. In all, 18,000 student records and information about 6000 parents were also exposed when strategy consulting company Public Consulting Group accidentally left this information on an unsecure server that was indexed by Google.
We just recently celebrated our 25th anniversary as an enterprise software company providing document delivery solutions globally, which include customers from 30 of the Fortune 100 companies. Thanks for the note Dialogic!
We have a lot of customers using BDS for HR – obviously HR departments have lots of personal information and they do have to work with insurance companies, health plans, payroll, etc. Zuckerman Spaeder LLP, a top law firm with offices in Washington, New York, Tampa, and Baltimore, started off using BDS in its HR department. News of the success led to the expansion of BDS to its litigation support team, and now is firm-wide.
CIO Shawn Mitowski just penned an article on FindLaw detailing how he chose Biscom’s secure file transfer solution to solve the security concerns of e-mail, and other unsecure methods to exchange documents. Big selling points were ease of use and security, as well as large file support. Thanks for the nice article Shawn!
The Ha
rvard and Yale football rivalry is the second oldest continuing rivalry in college football history. “The Game” pits Harvard Crimson against Yale Bulldogs and goes back to 1875.
However, there’s another rivalry that neither Harvard or Yale cares to win – being the unfortunate victim of a data breach. In February 2008, hackers accessed about 10,000 personal records from Harvard, including 6,000 social security numbers. Just last month, Yale discovered that an FTP server was indexed by Google after a search algorithm change, resulting in the names and social security numbers of 43,000 faculty, staff, and students made publicly available for ten months.
Their recourse – credit monitoring service for a year. Doesn’t really solve the problem, but it does end up costing these universities quite a bit of money. Or, they could have invested a small fraction of the cost and penalties in technology and solutions that would have mitigated or even prevented these problems entirely. These two prominent institutions of higher learning should worry less about losing “The Game” and more about losing their data and information assets.
We’re excited to announce Biscom Delivery Server version 4.1 with two major integrations: anti-virus and PayPal.
We’ve partnered with OPSWAT and have tightly integrated their AV product Metascan, which uses three separate AV engines to scan any files transferred through BDS for threats.
We’ve also added the ability to easily add e-commerce to your file transfers. Using PayPal, BDS senders can charge recipients for any delivery. Recipients who want to download your files can pay with their credit card or PayPal account, and once that transaction is complete, are able to retrieve the files.
We got a nice mention in Law Technology News announcing three law firms – Gilbert, von Briesen & Roper, and Jackson Lewis – who all selected BDS for their secure file transfer requirements. They are using BDS for large litigation files, confidential health and estate planning documents, and like most of our customers, will find many more areas they can leverage the security and reporting capabilities of BDS.
For our healthcare readers out there, be sure to join us for a Webinar on Tuesday, June 14th, 2011, with nationally recognized security leader, Mac McMillan, CEO of CynergisTek. Avoiding data losses and security breaches should be a number one priority for hospitals and business associates dealing with private health information on a regular basis. Mac will provide an overview of:
- Encryption options
- Re-Evaluating Our Enterprise Security Standard
- Making Safe Harbor Meaningfu
Register for the webinar now.
Linda Musthaler, a frequent contributor to NetworkWorld, wrote a nice article (and a nice mention of Biscom Delivery Server) in the IT Best Practices Alert newsletter entitled File transfer solutions take pressure off email. She brings up great points about the issues with sending large files and the inadequacies of email, FTP, and thumb drives, especially for enterprises. This mirrors our view of email concerns, but she did seem to forget that Biscom has been offering an Outlook add-in for secure file transfer since Outlook 2003!
