Designing a secure e-health network system

Healthcare data breaches are a growing issue, with healthcare security incidents increasing more than 900% in the last 2 years. A large U.S. health insurance provider had a major data breach, which resulted in the theft of more than 80 million patient and employee records. The U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) currently does not require Electronic Personal Health Information (ePHI) to be encrypted, increasing the vulnerability of e-health information. This paper proposes a secure e-health network system architecture which will significantly reduce the risk of data breaches and data theft, with minimal additional cost or network delay. This architecture is reliant on the application client and ensures authorized access to health records through the use of a secure client and a 2-step authentication process. The proposed network design will reduce instances of compromised networks, phishing attacks, or unwanted remote access, while improving authenticity of credentials.