14 Oct CISOs: Healthcare’s new rock stars
‘Every board is going to be asking its CEO, “How secure are we?” That wasn’t a question ever asked in boardrooms.’
There’s a new chief in town responsible for safeguarding healthcare organizations’ most valued asset: information.
Amid the near-constant flood of data breaches and a fast-evolving cyberthreat landscape, the absolute need to prioritize information security is only growing stronger.
That calls for a leader who can protect his or her organization’s critical clinical and financial data from such a relentless and multifarious threat: the chief information security officer.
The drumbeat of news in recent years has been sobering for security professionals. In May 2014, for instance, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services slapped Columbia University and New York-Presbyterian with a record $4.8 million HIPAA settlement after patient data wound up on Google.
And this year, hackers have hit healthcare harder than ever. In February and March, they went after health plans Anthem and Premera Blue Cross, compromising the health data of 79 million and 11 million people, respectively. In July, cyber crooks swiped the data of 4.5 million patients at UCLA Health System.
“Every board is going to be asking its CEO, ‘How secure are we?’ That wasn’t a question ever asked in boardrooms,” Ted Schlein, general partner at Silicon Valley venture capitalist Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers told PBS’ Charlie Rose. “Every board is going to end up with a security expert on it.”