It’s imperative for healthcare organizations and business associates to take every precaution when it comes to managing protected health information or PHI. Aside from having significant regulatory and compliance implications, failing to protect PHI can seriously affect clients and damage a business’s reputation.

Many healthcare organizations are at risk of data breaches caused by insider threats. These are security risks within your organization and can be any of your current or former employees, partners, and contractors who have knowledge about your computer systems.

Protected health information (PHI) includes personal, medical, and financial information, as well as other data created or used when a patient sought and received healthcare services. Due to the sensitive nature of PHI, it is highly valuable to hackers — and this is why your healthcare organization must do everything possible to protect any PHI data it handles.

Healthcare is the only industry where insider threats pose the greatest threat to sensitive data, with 58 percent of security incidents coming from people working within the organization itself. Here’s a look at five ways to prevent such breaches.

#1 Educate - The workforce (meaning all healthcare employees) must be educated on allowable uses and disclosures of protected health information (PHI) and the risk associated with certain behaviors, patient privacy, and data security.