14,000 HIV Patient Records Leaked
Information about more than 14,000 HIV patients included in a Singapore health registry was exposed online, allegedly by a U.S. citizen whose partner was a Singapore doctor who had authority to access the data. The incident illustrates the importance of taking steps to safeguard the most sensitive patient information from leaks.
For instance, to prevent incidents along the lines of the Singapore HIV data leak, organizations handling especially sensitive health information should consider using behavioral analytics to monitor and detect when this data is inappropriately used or disclosed, suggests privacy attorney David Holtzman, vice president of the security consultancy CynergisTek.
"These monitoring tools provide data protection professionals full visibility in to how users are accessing individually identifiable health information, allowing healthcare organizations to better protect confidentiality and proactively detect actual threats to sensitive data," he says.
