“You see, but you don’t pay attention.” The distinction is unmistakable.” In “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Sherlock Holmes tells John Watson this. The number of steps from the hall to the rooms upstairs was what Holmes was referring to. Watson admitted that he had climbed those steps hundreds of times, but he couldn’t say how many. In the world of IT security, the same can be said. There is a lot of data available, an overwhelming amount in fact, from hundreds of sources, but it is rarely observed. It’s a big difference between having something and getting value out of it.
“Peace Health employee accessed patient information unnecessarily,” according to the story. An employee of Peace Health, a Vancouver medical center, accessed electronic files containing protected health information, including patient names, ages, medical records, account numbers, admission and discharge dates, progress notes, and diagnoses, on Aug. 9. Between November 2011 and July 2017, the employee had access to patient information, according to an investigation.
What? This had been going on for five years and had only recently been discovered? It appears that this is yet another instance of “you see but do not observe,” and the distinction is obvious. This employee’s log data had been accumulating and faithfully archived, but it had never been examined.
What effect did it have? There was reputational damage, as well as costs (letters, call center expenses, and so on), as well as the possibility of HHS fines for the HIPAA violation. Furthermore, regular tasks were disrupted in order to investigate the scope and depth of this incident, as well as any related incidents that may have occurred.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, according to Ben Franklin. In this case, the same is true. Given the volume of security data emitted by today’s network, we at CYB3R-X Platform understand how difficult it is to pay attention. As a result, we offer security monitoring as a service so that you don’t just get more technology shoved in your face, but also get the results you want.
