Life Sciences & Health Care Companies Unprepared for Information Security Risks: Deloi...(level of preparedness to meet current an...),Health

Among other key findings of the study, respondents acknowledge that identity and access management is a top operational imperative and a core enabler of enterprise applications as access to information and data is a growing need. Also factored into this are productivity via flexible working environments and retaining top talent, and fixed costs savings via a reduced need for real estate assets.

With full-scale adoption of electronic health record technologies, particularly within healthcare providers, and the use and reliance of third parties and vendors, it will escalate and increase risk to consumer, patient and business information.

"The constant balancing act for organizations is providing convenient access for employees while maintaining strong access control to information," said Junaideen.

Data loss and information leakage (the movement of a data asset from an intended state to an unintended, inappropriate or unauthorized state) were also a great concern to respondents. The data could be patient names, phone numbers, addresses and lab results, among other items. Only a small percentage of respondents currently have data leakage protection technology fully deployed, compared to the majority of respondents that have firewalls and anti-virus technology.

"Most organizations have been relatively slow to embrace technologies that prevent data leakage because of traditional thinking," said Junaideen. "In the past, securing operating systems, networks, storage, communication channels and the hardware they ran on was enough. And that's no longer true."

The Deloitte 2009 Global Security Study for Life Sciences and Health Care companies is available free at '/>"/>