Legacy Health IT Systems – So Old They’re Secure

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the ticking time bomb that is legacy healthcare IT systems. The topic has been top of mind for me ever since Galen Healthcare Solutions wrote their Tackling EHR & EMR Transition series of blog posts. This is an important topic even if it’s not a sexy one. I don’t think we need to dive into the details of why legacy healthcare IT systems are a security risk for most healthcare organizations. Hospitals and health systems have hundreds of production systems that they’re trying to keep secure. It’s not hard to see why legacy systems get forgotten. Forgotten systems are ripe for hackers and others that want to do nefarious things. Although, I did hear someone recently talking about legacy health IT systems who said that they had some technology in their organization that was so old it was secure again. I guess there’s something to say about having systems that are so old that hackers don’t have tools that can breach such old systems or that can read old files. Not to mention that many of these older systems weren’t internet connected. While I find humor in the idea that something could be so old that it’s secure again, that’s not the reality for most legacy systems. Most old systems can be breached and will be breached if they’re not considered “production” when it comes to patching and securing them. When you think about the costs of updating and securing your l...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Healthcare HealthCare IT HIPAA General EHR Archive Galen Healthcare Solutions Legacy EHR Legacy Health Data Legacy Health IT Legacy Healthcare IT Source Type: blogs