News About Missing Or Stolen Information - 1492 Words

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Study News about missing or stolen information are becoming more rampant as a result of poor handling practices as organisations rely on electronic systems to collect, store and retrieve sensitive corporate and customer data. Increasingly, large amounts of personal and private medical data are being collected, stored and transmitted throughout the health industry especially, the hospitals. This has serious data privacy and integrity consequences. In his writing, (Bradley 2013) explains that a proper Information handling practice would ensure the protection of individual servers and PCs inside an organisation from the various threats both inside and outside of organisations. Criminals are not†¦show more content†¦Ordinary users of data may not be aware that these data should be secure, how they should be secured or why they should be secured. Walsh, (2010), points to the fact that there is a perception of â€Å"bad† things and people out there, which can cause harm to a pers on’s computer or to the person themselves, through theft. But these are perceptions as opposed to concrete understandings. It is practical to assume that users of computing systems in hospitals are not technical experts in the field of computing or computer security and may not be responsible for the handling of their databases or have any ability to do so, i.e. they do not have administrative privileges to their workstations. In as much as we understand the problem domain it is necessary to understand the core concepts of computer security. Stewart et al (2008), discusses the main objectives of security as seen through the CIA Triad: Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. The most important of these from the perspective of health data in medical practice is confidentiality. Confidentiality of information is paramount when dealing with medical information. This project will attempt to understand the state of confidentiality, availability and integrity in the surveyed hospitals. The global security arena has experienced a number of high profile security incidents that resulted from the poor