Q&A: How a Health 'Data Spill' Could Be More Damaging Than What BP Did to the Gulf

Tom Sullivan | Government Health IT | December 5, 2011

The street value of health information is 50 times greater than that of other data types. Even worse, the healthcare industry is among the weakest at protecting such information. With organized criminals trying to steal medical IDs, sloppy mistakes becoming more commonplace, mobile devices serving as single sign-on gateways to records and even bioterrorism now a factor, healthcare is ripe for some a wake-up call – one that just might come in the form a damaging "data spill."

Government Health IT Editor Tom Sullivan spoke with Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, and Rick Kam, president of ID Experts (pictured below), which sponsored Ponemon's second annual Benchmark Study on Patient Privacy and Data Security. He asked about that data spill assertion, why healthcare lags other industries in privacy and security, and how the $6.5 billion spent on responding to data breaches could be better invested...