Data Triage For The Boston Bombing: How Beth Israel Deaconess Protected Patient Records From Hackers, Journalists, And Curious Doctors

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.fastcompany.com/3016156/the-code-war/data-triage-for-the-boston-bombing-how-beth-israel-deaconess-protected-patient-

By Neal Ungerleider
Fast Company
August 21, 2013

When bombs went off at the Boston Marathon on April 15, Beth Israel 
Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) CIO John Halamka found himself dealing 
with the kind of the emergency few drills could ever prepare you for. As 
bombing victims were brought into his downtown hospital and the city went 
into lockdown, Halamka and his team began to parse a nightmare situation.

Then it got worse. Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was bought to Beth Israel... 
and Halamka, a prominent figure in the bioinformatics world, had to deal 
with a very unique challenge: How to make sure the Boston bombers' medical 
records were not stolen by journalists, leaked by hospital employees 
looking for a payday, or made catch of the day by hackers or foreign 
intelligence services. (Some of these records, it's worth noting, have 
recently been released by court order.)

Halamka came to his position at BIDMC with a unique resume. A practicing 
emergency room physician, he previously worked as a research assistant to 
Edward Teller and Milton Friedman. Outside of medicine, Halamka founded a 
software development firm and is a professor at Harvard Medical School. 
These days, he maintains the popular Geek Doctor blog and lives on an 
alpaca-breeding farm in rural Massachusetts.

BIDMC explained their tech challenges following the marathon bombing at 
the United Summit in Boston, an annual security event sponsored by 
Metasploit creators Rapid7. It was a unique situation for everyone at the 
hospital, and IT workers had to jump into crisis mode much like the 
surgeons and nurses. After all, what happens to the hospital if their 
computers crash?

After his presentation, Halamka explained to Fast Company how nobody 
accounted for the possibility that BIDMC's engineers could be detained in 
the hospital's off-site data center as Boston entered lockdown.

[...]



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