The continuous increase in data breaches at health care providers has raised privacy concerns. There were some studies conducted in order to find out the main cause of these breaches. Some of the hospitals surveyed said that it is due to insufficient funding for security. Others said that lost or stolen devices contributed greatly to the sudden surge in data breaches. The first reason could be attributed more to the government’s priorities in dispensing funds, but the second one seems to point to human error, or the lack of knowledge on the part of the health care professionals on how to secure patient data.

Mobile technology is now widely used in almost all private and public organizations. The use of smartphones or tablets has made it very convenient for people to manage data. Doctors and other health care professionals are now using these gadgets for electronic health records. These tools, as observers point out, lack the much needed, required security. Working on their own, some doctors are using these gadgets without ample knowledge on the use of encryption technology, or even passwords.

Everyone knows about hackers and how they must keep themselves safe and secure so that they won’t be hacked online. These criminals can actually break into your system and completely take it over; they will be moving the mouse and not you! A virtual hijacking if you will. More common is the practice of just breaking through your security programs and reading through your personal and sensitive documents, and trying to recover some sort of identifying or useful information; think bank account numbers, passwords, log in names, credit card numbers, etc.

This seems like it would take a master hacker to do, but it really doesn’t. These hackers often are just somewhat computer savvy people with online guides (yes, these are published) on how to break into someone’s system. The great thing for them is that people usually all just keep their stock firewalls and virus protection programs for a false sense of security. These are easy to hack for hackers because you get what you paid for, and they were free. After doing so many of them too, they learn their way around a standard firewall.

Because of this, hackers try to stick to the people who simply have no protection, or just very minimal extra protection. Some people’s Internet signals are completely unsecured, and a criminal would have no problem breaking in. When you log on to your home Internet connection, did you have to put in a password? Look and see if the status is “unsecured” or “open”. Try to avoid this and install a WEP key which is a bunch of figures you put together that acts as a password. This might not stop a pro hacker from getting into your computer, but it will stop your neighbors from mooching off of your connection, reading your documents, and possibly giving you a virus. When they are on your connection, you may notice slower browsing speeds than normal.