Adoption of Security Measures While Implementing Electronic Health Records

For the past 50 years, security has been an issue for computer specialists. However, the potential security risks changed from less critical breaches such as someone stealing a few CPU cycles or performing computer pranks (Williams 2002) to extremely damaging issues such as identity theft, credit card theft, denial of service, or destruction of computer files and content. Healthcare organizations are struggling as one of the latest and last computer frontiers. Healthcare organizations are facing many issues including security issues while exploring the adoption of electronic health record (EHR) systems. This article proposes that while healthcare organizations should address authentication and access issues using biometrics and single signon (SSO) systems, many healthcare organizations are slow to adopt an EHR and slower to adopt biometric technology and single sign-on functionality despite the benefits of each.