The recent Alberta Health Services breach compromised the privacy and confidential medical details of over 11000 Canadians, while US organizations have compromised millions of patient and individual records. The solution, according to industry experts is not rocket science, but the challenge is in doing it right.
Toronto, July 18, 2009 — Toronto-based privacy consultants from Informatica Security base their assessment on thousands of distinct incidents over the past two decades. The conclusion: organizations consistently fail to adopt proven security best practices to effectively support privacy.
“Organizations regard the Privacy Office as a compliance burden and a functional drain on resources. Privacy officers should not be marginalized or excluded from operations that carry any risk to personal records and financial transactions” says Claudiu Popa, a recognized security expert and Informatica’s founder. “Instead, privacy officers should be given the tools to protect the organization’s reputation, prevent damaging breaches and offer guidance for achieving legal compliance in the most efficient way”.
Last week’s disclosure of the Alberta privacy breach is only the latest in a long series of breaches in Canada and the US. “We have built an outstanding body of knowledge around the security and privacy challenges of the healthcare and the financial industries. This allows us to observe situations as they unfold, anticipate breaches and reduce the reputational impact for the organization, but even more importantly, often prevent the negative effects on the innocent individuals whose records are compromised, often without their knowledge. It is true that no one can make the promise of 100% security, but every organization is responsible for the personal information records that it has been entrusted with”.
Informatica’s certified security experts have developed an effective approach – included in their FlexSecure Verify™ solution offering – to dealing with healthcare and financial industry security challenges, in particular those whose impact is critical to operations. The solution is to focus on best practices: address the threat of Trojans and viruses, mobile and remote access and security awareness for all staff members. “This, in combination with proper system configuration and management policy enforcement will address over 90% of all security issues and support privacy objectives every time. To date, the healthcare industry has placed a priority on the idea that the public wants to know as little as possible, but in fact the public wants reassurance that all steps are being taken to ensure the protection of patient information, their most sensitive and valuable asset.” says Popa. With proper privacy and security protection such as Informatica’s FlexSecure Verify™ solutions, reliable healthcare information asset protection is now a reality.
About Informatica Security Corporation
Founded in 1989, Informatica Security and Privacy is a leading information risk management consulting firm focused on providing unmatched expertise to enable client organizations to control and mitigate information security risks, meet compliance challenges, alleviate the effects of wrongsourcing and adopt proven standards and best practices for exceptional governance. The firm’s FlexSecure™ risk assessments and professional audits, FlexProtect™ security management, STORM™ (Scalable Techniques for Operational Risk Management) and WorkLife™ Security and Privacy Awareness training solutions are proven best-of-breed solutions that scale to meet the business and compliance requirements of diverse industries.
For additional information, please visit www.HealthcarePrivacy.ca and www.InformationSecurityCanada.com.
Informatica Security and Privacy, Informatica Education, Informatica Research, the Informatica logo, FlexSecure™, FlexProtect™ and WorkLife™, VirtualCSO™ and VirtualCPO™ are trademarks or service marks of Informatica Corporation. All Informatica white papers, proprietary research, Web site content, presentations, communications, policies and Informatica-branded documentation are Copyright © Informatica Corporation and permission must be specifically granted for use by any party. All other brands or product names are trademarks of their respective companies, organizations or standards bodies.
For media enquiries and solution requests contact:
Claudiu Popa, CISSP, PMP, CISA, President & CSO, Informatica Corporation, 416-431-9012 [email protected]
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Contact:
Claudiu Popa, CISSP, PMP, CISA
President & CSO
Informatica Corporation
Toronto, ON
416-431-9012
[email protected]
http://www.InformationSecurityCanada.com
