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The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a law that stipulates the creation of security standards to safeguard Protected Health Information (PHI). The law focuses on governing the storage and processing of medical records by Health Care Providers and other stakeholders in the healthcare industry.
In traditional healthcare facilities, cybersecurity efforts were initially geared towards protecting legacy systems used to run healthcare operations. With the changing threat landscape, organizations are increasingly adopting security practices, tools, and other administrative safeguards to secure access to healthcare networks and underlying data. To support this, the HIPAA act additionally enlists the legal and technical requirements for protecting critical healthcare assets and keeping medical records safe from the potential risks of a data breach.
Given the sensitivity of Protected Health Information, threat actors target HIPAA vulnerabilities for unauthorized access to critical files and electronic records. This guide discusses various HIPAA vulnerabilities, potential consequences of a HIPAA breach, how such attacks are orchestrated, and standard attack prevention measures.