Survey Says Security Measures are Sub-Standard

Seventy Seven percent of hospitals and health systems in the U.S. are "not very confident" in the effectiveness of their information security standards, according to a survey conducted by New York-based PricewaterhouseCoopers and CIO Magazine (Framingham, Mass.).

Key finding of the survey, entitled "The State of Information Security 2007," include:

• 86 percent are "not very confident" in their outsourced vendors' information security activities.
• 45 percent of hospitals and health systems have no idea how to measure the effectiveness of their information security spending.
• 84 percent of providers said that regulatory compliance is what is driving their information security spending.
• The most probable source of information security breaches are internal, with 5 percent of respondents saying breaches were caused by employees, and another 18 percent saying former employees caused a security infringement.
• Improving physician effectiveness and quality of life is a top priority for provider organizations, with 75 percent now having secure remote access.