Business associate agreements should not be a dumping ground for healthcare entities to make demands on their vendors with provisions that go beyond specific HIPAA privacy and security regulations, says attorney Gerry Hinkley.

As cyber-attacks become more common, organizations must devise new ways to shorten response times and lessen the impact, says Paul Nguyen of CSG Invotas.

As 10 regional health information exchanges in New York become interconnected into a statewide network, consistency in core privacy and security policies is proving essential, says David Whitlinger, executive director of the statewide initiative.

The best way to detect whether hackers have penetrated an IT system is to examine outbound traffic, says Eric Cole, the latest inductee to the Infosecurity Europe Hall of Fame.

A George Mason University research fellow says the cybersecurity framework, issued earlier this year by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is likely to cause more problems than it solves.

Verizon's latest annual breach report shows that Web application attacks increased more than malware-fueled point-of-sale intrusions in 2013, says analyst Dave Ostertag, who provides an overview of the report's findings.

Privacy and security are vital components of all major projects that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has under way, says Karen DeSalvo, M.D., the new head of the office.

Although access to electronic health information is expanding to more users, including patients, many healthcare organizations are still reluctant to use advanced methods of authentication, says Jeff Cobb, CISO at Capella HealthCare.

While the 2014 Healthcare Information Security Today survey indicates more healthcare entities are performing HIPAA security risk assessments, smaller providers and business associates are still struggling with this task, says security expert Kate Borten.

Many covered entities are still tackling the challenge of making sure their business associates are HIPAA compliant, says security specialist Andrew Hicks, who analyzes the results of the 2014 Healthcare Information Security Today survey .