P2P Greater Threat Than Theft & Media Loss

In a new from Dartmouth University, P2P applications were found to be a greater threat to healthcare data than theft & loss of portable storage media. The study is called “Data Hemorrhages in the Health Care Sector”. Apparantly Healthcare organizations often store sensitive data in forms such as word docs and excel. These documents are often indexed and posted for download by common P2P applications if not configured properly.

A blog post from back in August 08 enumerates these risks. The bottom line is that a P2P application can open up your sensitive data to world and nothing you are using today for security will stop it. And all your employee wanted to do was download a couple of free songs off the Internet.

http://www.scmagazineus.com/Medical-data-leakage-rampant-on-P2P-networks/article/127216/

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=network_security&articleId=9127066&taxonomyId=142&intsrc=kc_top