HIPAA: Securing medical networks

AbstractThe Health Information Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) imposes strict regulations on healthcare institutions and commercial vendors to indemnify clinical data against unscrupulous users. Security vulnerabilities concerning hospital information systems not only negatively impact patient healthcare, but may also represent a potential federal violation. For a comprehensive understanding of the security of a radiology communication network, a detailed survey of the Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) was compiled. In this paper, we present survey results and a set of recommendations for implementing PACS security.