Over on the EMR and HIPAA blog, John says he’s torn about the case where a young man has been charged for his somewhat poorly thought out approach to a job interview with Houston Healthcare:
… Honestly, Robert Rhodes, chief information officer for Houston Healthcare, just sounds like an angry CIO whose security efforts were torn to shreds by a 21 year old. I’d be angry too if I were Robert Rhodes. Mostly because Robert Rhodes is the one that should be fired for having such porous security and they should hire Christopher Wheeler to help them actually implement some real security.
Of course, the CIO is quick to point out that “He did not breach our internet security. He got in through a stolen pass word. He didn’t discover a breach. He was the breach.”
This is just wrong. It wasn’t stolen, but given to him as part of his duties to help the doctor connect to the hospital. That’s not a breach. What’s insane is that a doctor’s password would have the ability to create all these back doors and expose seven flaws in the hospital’s IT systems. The CIO should be held accountable for that. So much for only giving users the access that they need. Or maybe the doctors at Houston Healthcare need that ability. Yeah, right.
Read more of his commentary on EMR and HIPAA. The type of access control issue that John highlights seems somewhat rampant and is still a challenge in the healthcare sector (cf, this post on PHIprivacy.net for an example).