Healthcare Information Security Podcast

Eugene Spafford thinks America needs the cybersecurity equivalent of an agriculture extension service to help educate citizens on IT security.

Yahoo's Justin Somaini believes his fellow CISOs in business and government do a good job keeping their bosses informed of proper information security practices, but could do better in educating the rank and file about them.

Federal officials should consider a major revamp of a proposal that would require healthcare organizations to provide patients with a report listing everyone who has electronically accessed their records, a former government official who helped draft the proposal says.

ISACA's Marc Vael says differences in cloud computing environments and cloud providers can pose security risks. But well thought-out contracts and risk-management plans can fill potential security gaps and ensure business continuity during outages and disasters.

No two fraud incidents may be exactly alike, but a fraud investigator's approach can still be very consistent and precise, says Jean-Francois Legault, a fraud investigations specialist with Deloitte and Touche.

Before entering a contract with a cloud computing company, organizations should consider three critical issues, says Feisal Nanji, executive director at the security consulting firm Techumen.

Scott Laliberte, managing director of Protiviti, wrote the book on penetration testing, and he has strong feelings about what organizations are doing right and wrong when assessing their information security risks today.

Dan Rode of the American Health Information Management Association describes why the group wants to see major revisions in a proposed federal rule requiring hospitals, clinics and others to give patients access reports listing everyone who's viewed their records.

There are significant hard and soft benefits for government agencies to gain by investing now in solutions built around Trustable Identities, says Mike Ozburn, principal of Booz Allen Hamilton.

Performing digital forensics in the cloud isn't necessarily a new discipline, says Rob Lee of SANS Institute. But the task definitely requires a whole new mindset and some new skills from investigators.

It is no longer enough for information security professionals to secure critical information. They also need to be asking about the legitimacy of where this information comes from, says John Colley, managing director of (ISC)2 in EMEA.

Dickie George of the National Security Agency has one word to describe the state of information security education today: "Spotty." And this state must improve if we hope to fill all the growing demand for security pros.

NIST's Ron Ross points out that its seminal security control guidance, Special Publication 800-53, contains only one privacy control, requiring agencies to conduct a privacy impact assessment. That will change by year's end.

You know your organization's social media policy is a good one when it starts sounding less like a checklist and more like common sense, says Sherrie Madia, social media expert and author.

An important component of preparing for a potential HIPAA compliance audit is to complete a "walk through" to make sure privacy and security policies and procedures are practical and effective, former HIPAA enforcer Adam Greene advises.

The long-overdue HIPAA compliance audit program likely will launch late this year or early in 2012 after up to 20 test audits are completed, says Susan McAndrew, deputy director of the federal agency overseeing the program.

Eddie Schwartz didn't shy away from the offer to become RSA's first chief security officer after the security firm experienced a sophisticated advanced-persistent-threat breach. Instead, Schwartz embraced the hack as the reason to take the job. (See RSA to Get Its First Chief Security Officer.)

Recent high-profile data breaches and heightened threats add up to one thing: a bright future for information security professionals who want to start or re-start a career in risk management.

RSA customers who feel victimized by last March's breach of the security vendor's computers have viable options that include continued use of the SecurID authentication tokens, those offered by competitors, or something entirely different: biometrics.

Today's top fraud threats recognize no global boundaries, says James Ratley, head of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. And they require a stronger global workforce than ever before.