Read to learn how to stop information from being stolen and restore operations as quickly as possible.
This post contains the text from the White Paper: How to Effectively Manage a Healthcare Data Breach. Download the PDF
You can’t afford to be unprepared for a data breach’s aftermath. Even organizations with the strictest data security and IT policies could easily go the way of recent victims. Last year, medical and healthcare entities accounted for 29.2% of reported data breaches.
It’s up to you to control the situation and protect your patients and organization. The following 5 steps will help you successfully stop information from being stolen, mitigate further damage, and restore operations as quickly as possible.
If you suspect a data breach, here’s your objective: stop information from being stolen and repair your systems so a breach won’t happen again. This begins by executing your incident response plan (IRP).
Department of Health and Human Services states that an “impermissible use or disclosure of PHI is presumed to be a breach unless the covered entity or business associate, as applicable, demonstrates that there is a low probability that the PHI has been compromised based on a risk assessment of at least the following factors:
A well-executed incident response plan can minimize breach impact, reduce fines, decrease negative press, and help you get back to business more quickly. In an ideal world, you should already have an incident response plan prepared and employees trained to quickly deal with a data breach situation.
For some reason, however, most breached organizations SecurityMetrics has investigated didn’t have an incident response plan at the time of the incursion.
With no plan, employees scramble to figure out what they’re supposed to do, and that’s when big mistakes are made. (e.g., wiping a system without first creating images of the compromised systems to learn what occurred and to avoid re-infection).
When a healthcare organization becomes aware of a possible breach, it’s understandable to want to fix it immediately. However, without taking the proper steps and involving the right people, you could inadvertently destroy valuable forensic data used by investigators to determine how and when the breach occurred, and what to recommend in order to properly secure the network against the current attack or similar future attacks.
When you discover a breach, remember:
Your first priority at this point in time is to isolate the affected system(s) to prevent further damage until your forensic investigator can walk you through the more complex and long-term containment.
A data breach is a crisis that must be managed through teamwork. Assemble your incident response team immediately. (Hopefully you’ve already met and discussed roles during crisis practices and initiated your incident response plan.)
Your team should include a team leader, lead investigator, communications leader, C-suite representative, office administrator, human resources, IT, attorney, public relations, breach response experts, and a business associate representative (if applicable). Each brings a unique side to the table with a specific responsibility to manage the crisis. In smaller organizations, some people might fulfill multiple roles.
The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule, 45 CFR §§ 164.400-414, requires HIPAA covered entities and their business associates to provide notification following a breach of unsecured patient data.
If you’re a covered entity, your statements must be sent to affected patients by first-class mail and/or email in less than 60 days after the breach. If 10 or more individuals’ information is out-of-date or insufficient (or the breach affects more than 500 residents of a state or jurisdiction), post the statement on your website for at least 90 days and/or provide notice in major print or broadcast media in the affected area.
Covered entities also need to notify the Secretary of the HHS about the breach. If a breach affects fewer than 500 individuals, the covered entity may notify the Secretary of such breaches on an annual basis. If a breach affects 500 or more individuals, covered entities must notify the Secretary of the HHS within 60 days following a breach (if not immediately).
If you’re a business associate, notify affected covered entities after discovering the data breach immediately (and no later than 60 days after discovering the breach). Identify each individual affected by the breach, as well as any information necessary for statements. Send this information to affected covered entities.
Proper communication is critical to successfully managing a data breach, and a key function of the incident response team is to determine how and when notifications will be made.
Identify in advance the person within your organization (perhaps your inside legal counsel, newly hired breach management firm, C-level executive, etc.) who is responsible for ensuring the notifications are made timely. Your public response to the data breach will be judged heavily, so think this through.
Your patients will discover if you keep important breach information from them. If the media marks your organization untrustworthy for withholding information, that label could end up hurting you worse than the other effects of the data breach. Some organizations fall into the, “Let’s make sure we know exactly what’s going on before we say anything at all” trap, but excessive delays in releasing a statement may be seen as an attempted cover-up.
Providing some information is usually better than saying nothing at all. You can always provide updated statements as needed on your website. In all cases regarding public statements, seek the guidance of your legal counsel.
Poorly informed employees can often circulate rumors—true or not. As a team, establish your media policy that governs who is allowed to speak to the media. Designate a spokesperson and ensure employees understand they are not authorized to speak about the breach.
Depending on your particular circumstances, you may find it beneficial to withhold from the rank and file employees the fact that your company has suffered data breach until shortly before any public statements are made.
Your incident response team should craft specific statements that target the various audiences, including a holding statement, a press release, a patient statement, and an internal/employee statement. These should be communicated to appropriate parties that could potentially be affected by the breach, such as business associates, third-party contractors, stockholders, law enforcement, and ultimately patients.
Your statements should nip issues in the bud by addressing questions like:
Explain that you are committed to solving the issue and protecting your patient’s information and interests. Where you deem appropriate, you could offer an official apology and perhaps other forms of assistance such as ID theft monitoring.
Management of a data breach doesn’t end with your public statement. Now comes the hardest part: investigating and fixing everything. Luckily, you’re not alone. If you hire a forensic investigator, they will perform the majority of the investigation and then provide recommendations on how to repair your environment to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
After the cause of the breach has been identified and eradicated, you need to ensure all systems have been hardened, patched, replaced, and tested before you consider re-introducing the previously compromised systems back into your PHI environment. During this process, ask yourself these questions:
Data breaches have serious financial consequences. Obviously, the financial examples presented below will change based on your size, how much patient data was stolen, how hackers got into your organization, if you were willfully aware of your vulnerabilities, etc.
If breached, you may only be liable for a few of these fines, or you could be expected to pay even more than listed below. Depending on the size of your breach, you may have to pay the following:
A key part of a successful breach response is what you learned from the breach. After the dust has settled, assemble your incident response team once again to review the events in preparation for a potential attack. Incorporate the lessons you’ve learned and ask, “How can we improve the process next time?” And then revise your incident response plan. Don’t forget to communicate your commitment to data security to the media, even after you’ve repaired the damage.
Don’t be caught unprepared for a data breach’s aftermath. Practice and review your incident response plan with annual desktop run-throughs and simulation training. If you don’t have a plan, make this a top priority.
With a solid and practiced incident response plan, you and your staff will be ready to stop patient data from being stolen, mitigate further damage, and restore operations as quickly as possible.
We help customers close security and compliance gaps to avoid data breaches. Our forensic, penetration testing, and audit teams identify best security practices and simplify compliance mandates (PCI DSS, HIPAA, HITRUST, GDPR). As an Approved Scanning Vendor, Qualified Security Assessor, Certified Forensic Investigator, we have tested over 1 million systems for security.
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