Spies.
What image just flashed through you mind?
James Bond? George Smiley? Aldrich Ames?
No, not them, but, rather, the one that you undoubtedly have within your organization.
Today, there are criminal cases in which a defendant’s Amazon Alexa has been subpoenaed to allow prosecutors to tap into its memory of what was said at the scene of the crime. There are civil cases in which the onboard computer inside a car has been, in essence “questioned,” in order to get information about the speed of the car at the time of an accident.
Right now, in your medical practice or healthcare facility there are undoubtedly computers and also other devices that have memory which may be able to be tapped for information. Not, perhaps, realtime, but at least tapped into later to discover information about your practice.
Some of these devices are as innocuous as the multipurpose copier sitting on a desk, but others are medical devices of many sorts – especially as those devices become “smarter,” more equipped with extra memory designed to communicate with electronic health records.
Think about what information is on those machines. Consider how you have to protect them, not only for HIPAA purposes, but for what information they could reveal about your practice and your business operations.
Think about to whom they may soon be talking.
