Security News > 2020 > January > Unprotected Medical Systems Expose Data on Millions of Patients
Hundreds of Internet-accessible, unprotected medical imaging systems expose data on millions of patients worldwide, German security firm Greenbone reveals.
Such data included patient name and date of birth, date of examination, some details on the reason for examination, and even image data for those patients.
Overall, the 590 exposed systems contained more than 24.5 million data records from patients across 52 countries, including 737 million images, with 400 million of these images easily downloadable over the Internet.
A re-run of the analysis performed at the beginning of January has showed a slight decrease in the number of exposed PACS, though tens of millions of medical studies remain exposed to the Internet.
The issue, Greenbone says, can be mitigated through security awareness: organizations should increase visibility into their assets and check whether they are exposed to the Internet; physicians should verify that medical information transmitted in electronic form is encrypted and inquire why if not; and patients should ask doctors about their data protection regime.