George Hulme at Information Week opines on President-Elect Obama and HHS Secretary Daschle proposal for a health data infrastructure. Hulme articulates the fears of many info sec professionals: “Do you see that? Hospitals interconnected on the Internet. That’s a long-winded way to spell RISK. Because, when you airdrop a crate of technology on a segment of the economy that’s not accustomed to managing it, well, you’re going to get a certain amount of mayhem. “There will be breaches? a marked increase in medical identity theft. That is, unless this entire Health IT initiative is done right.”There will be a lot of security and software vendors jumping in and purporting to be able to secure networks, endpoints, removable media, and protect patients’ medical records. This sounds like a great economic boost for the Info Sec vendors. I hope we will see true data protection instead of information security “on paper.” http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/12/presidentelect.html