Eastern Health, Medicentres breaches boost demand for INFORMATICA’s VERIFY preventative data security and privacy audits
Toronto, May 14, 2014 /CNW/ – Since 2006, 1138 security lapses caused a combined 29,791,337 privacy breaches of health information, most of them in the United States. In Canada, the cumulative compromises of 6 million medical data records have concerned Privacy Commissioners and shocked the public across the country.
Toronto-based Informatica (ApplicationSecurity.ca) specializes in helping health information custodians such as health regions, clinics, hospitals and their service providers to detect and correct security weaknesses that can lead to costly and embarrassing privacy breaches.
The damage caused by the Eastern Health, Medicentres, Peterborough Regional Health, Durham Region Health, BC Health Ministry and Yukon Provincial Health Services, including financial penalties well over $1 million could have been prevented by adopting security reviews consistent with best practices according to Claudiu Popa, security author and auditor. Popa is credited with the creation of AVERT, an application security process in use by eHealth Saskatchewan and other health organizations for over a decade.
Informatica’s VERIFY™ Health Information Risk Assessments are customized for Canadian organizations that collect, store and manage personal health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII) across Canada.
The VERIFY™ process includes frequent confidential reporting on 7 facets of health information risk:
1. Network security and storage of sensitive data
2. Application and Web site privacy protection
3. Physical, on-site security assessment
4. Policies and data classification
5. Vendor and 3rd party audits
6. Regulatory compliance review
7. Business interruption and availability testing
VERIFY™ includes advanced techniques for ethical hacking, penetration testing and stress testing of systems to identify the risk to critical systems and personal information.
About the Company:
Established in 1989, Informatica is Canada’s first security-assurance-as-a-service provider, specializing in standards-based, data security and information privacy impact assessments.
Informatica provides generic and white-label best-of-breed information security services to large consulting partners and Fortune 1000 companies, across all industry sectors.
Informatica’s assessment process is recognized nationwide for auditable verification of systems, policies and applications. The Verify™ seal and Statement of Trust™ report demonstrate compliance, integrity and excellence. (http://Bit.ly/GetVerify)
Reviews/pre-audit assessments for PIPEDA, PHIPA/HIPA/HIA, CASL, PCI-DSS 3.0, ISO 27000/31000, Bill198 conducted by certified security professionals and Risk Advisors.
SOURCE: Informatica Security Corporation
For further information: Media Information: Claudiu Popa, CEO/Principal Risk Advisor, email: [email protected], www.HealthcarePrivacy.ca, Twitter:@datarisk
