Data and Information Security

This chapter describes data and information security in healthcare, including types of data and information, common cyber threats, data protection, and privacy methods. The chapter begins by exploring types of healthcare data such as electronic health records, administrative data, claims data, and clinical trial data, including patient or disease registries and health surveys. It then discusses key security and data protection methods for safeguarding healthcare data, which include authentication, authorization, encryption, data masking, hardware-based security, backups, and recovery techniques. The chapter proceeds with a discussion of common data threats and vulnerabilities. Lastly, it discusses data protection and privacy regulations with the industry’s best practices.