More Than 2 Petabytes of Unprotected Medical Data Found on Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) Servers
The results of 13 million medical examinations relating to around 3.5 million U.S. patients are unprotected and available to anyone on the internet, SecurityWeek has learned. This is despite the third week of this year's National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (week beginning 19 October 2020) majoring on 'Securing Internet-Connected Devices in Healthcare'. The details were disclosed to SecurityWeek by Dirk Schrader, global vice president at New Net Technologies (NNT -- a security and compliance software firm headquartered in Naples, Florida). He demonstrated that the records can be accessed via an app that can be downloaded from the internet by anyone. The records found are in files that are still actively updated, and provide three separate threats: personal identity theft (including the more valuable medical identity theft), personal extortion, and healthcare company breaches.
Schrader examined a range of radiology systems that include an image archive system -- PACS, or picture archiving and communication system. These contain not only imagery but metadata about individual patients. The metadata includes the name, data of birth, date and reason for the medical examination, and more.
