What would you prefer, losing your credit card to a hacker or your medical record? Right now consumers are pretty much protected against false purchases when they lose or have their credit card stolen. But we don’t hear much about the downside of losing your electronic medical record. That’s curious isn’t it? Your EMR many times contains credit card information too – so when there is a HIPAA breach the cyber-criminal gets BOTH. You can get a new credit card issued rather quickly. You can’t retract the various personal data points on your health record once it’s been stolen. Not only are your most personal medical records exposed to the public at large, but all your prescriptions are out there as well.

For the hacker who gets access to EMR data, it’s much more valuable as they can use your health care plan number to order false prescriptions and medical equipment. They can sell your addiction list to those that would like to purchase it. You’ve heard of a popular hacker trick using Ransomware – how about the medical twist to that – Bio-Blackmail.