Some of the nation’s biggest and best systems are scrambling to address their vulnerability to major assaults on their data.

Never before has so much personal medical information been online or been so easily transferrable. Medical information travels over networks, is stored on mobile devices and moves between insurers, hospitals, nursing homes and third-party providers in ways that would have seemed unimaginable two decades ago.

For the most part, that’s good. It allows doctors to know patients’ histories and search for patterns, making it easier to diagnose conditions and reduce unnecessary tests.

But it has also led to a rash of data breaches that are occurring with ever-greater frequency. As a society, we have become used to a certain amount of personal information being exposed online, which is why there are mere tremors, instead of quakes, when Target announces that 40 million customer accounts were hacked.

But medical information can be particularly sensitive.

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August 25, 2014 by Dan Goldberg, Capital magazine