Welcome to EMR and HIPAA

There was a recent news article that described how an emergency room was shutdown because of someone’s attempt to make a little cash. He basically had a little army of robots that would traverse the internet looking for vulerable computers that he could exploit. This technique isn’t anything new and so we should be use to it. However, it is sad when people put other people’s lives at risk because they want to make a buck. There’s really no excuse for it. Unfortunately I don’t think prison is even going to solve the problem. Although I do hope that he is convicted of whatever is possible.

More importantly is why wasn’t the hopsital better prepared for this? Regularly patching windows, anti-virus and adware programs can protect you from most of these attacks. This should give us all a little more interest in making sure our updating and scanning policies are good. My guess is that even the most basic HIPAA compliancy should have protected this hospital from attack.

Thankfully no one was hurt in this story. It will be a very sad day when this is not the case.