By Healthcare Facilities Today

Data breaches threaten healthcare organizations from all angles and new HIPAA rules make organizations responsible for the actions of their business associates - all this makes healthcare IT security a daunting task, but according to an article on CIO.com, it's not an impossible one.

With today's compliance deadline for the HIPAA Omnibus Rule, the industry finds itself at a crossroads, the article says. The rule brings 

HIPAA into the 21st century and finalizes security and privacy safeguards, but reports of patient data breaches are still all too common. 

A healthcare data breach analysis published by the Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) at the end of last year said that data theft outnumbers all other causes of data breaches combined. Since 2009, hospitals and health insurers have reported fewer breaches, which suggests that they are getting better at preventing data loss, but academic institutions and especially physician practices struggle to address the issue, HITRUST said.

"Where we believe many organizations falter is not identifying and restricting access to what is actually required at a data, application and network level," HITRUST said. "This leads to information leakage and, ultimately, high-profile breaches when they do occur."

Read the article.