S2, EP3 Medical PSA: Cybersecurity and Doctors

Cybersecurity is a problem in medical offices and hospitals. 45 million people were affected in 2021, a 41% increase over 2020.  In 2020, 34 million people were affected and in 2018, 14 million people were affected.   Outpatient clinics and subspecialty clinics were targetted preferentially. Hospital systems were also targetted.  The reasons were ransomware, credential harvesting or theft of devices such as laptops. Be careful with passwords and some physicians are using Lastpass.com as a password management tool. Another popular one is Dashlane.com.   Important to note that SMS, texting, is protected by the federal government.  Apple iPhone message system has "end to end" encryption, better than Whatsapp and Signal (private messenger apps).  Google and Droid phones are least safe because it encrypts only between the device and the server.  Thus when sending messages about patients, the iPhone is safer than droid phones.