House lawmakers are concerned that federal health data is ripe for cyberattacks, leaving data on clinical trials and Medicare vulnerable.
Lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee were worried that there are several weaknesses in the Department of Health and Human Services’ cybersecurity protections.
“We learned that there are fundamental weaknesses in cybersecurity in every division of HHS,” said Rep. Michael Burgess, R Texas, during a hearing Wednesday of the committee’s health subcommittee. “While the breaches haven’t been as serious, there is no reason in the world to sit back and wait for that disaster to happen.”
HHS holds medical data on participants in clinical trials and for beneficiaries of federal programs such as Medicare. A committee report released last year found that all five divisions of HHS were breached using “unsophisticated means.”
“If the data on clinical trials is vulnerable to hackers, how can companies be confident that their proprietary secrets won’t be stolen?” Burgess asked.
In 2013, the FDA suffered a breach of its internal network when hackers got access to data for 14,000 people.
The committee is considering a bill introduced last month that would reshuffle the organizational structure at HHS to give the chief information security officer more power to protect the department.
It essentially would separate the chief information security officer from the chief information officer, a move that other federal agencies such as the Department of Defense have done.
Democrats were largely in favor of the bipartisan bill. However, the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, said the committee hasn’t “had a chance to fully vet the bill.”
“We have to take comprehensive action, and I am glad to see this committee exploring ways to do that,” he later said.
Date: May 25, 2016