This project specifically aims at creating a Data Breach Monitoring System for medical information systems in healthcare organisations, with academic support often aligned with Online Assignment Help UK for structured research development. The move from paper to digital systems that characterises the transition from traditional health records to electronic health records brings both potential benefits and risks. While electronic health records are intended to improve patient care, enhance clinical decision support, and enable integrated care delivery (Attaran, 2022), they also increase the exposure of sensitive health data to cyber threats such as external hacking. The growing frequency and severity of data breaches in the healthcare sector highlight the necessity of this project, as such breaches can lead to financial losses, reputational damage, and, in severe cases, harm to patients.
This project intends to design and evaulate a data breach monitoring system to monitor and prevent a data breach of medical information in real-time for faster response by healthcare institutions. The system will use Splunk for logs monitoring and for exposing patterns associated with suspicious activities that can be notified regarding access to patient data.
Objectives
Approach to this project involves using elements of software engineering to produce a structured and methodical data breach monitoring system from the knowledge of threats.
Risk Profile Analysis: In the first stage, it involves testing awareness of the risk exposures that are likely to cause loss of data in healthcare facilities. This entails appreciation of some of the most widely practiced risks that are associated with systems that include weak passwords, limited encryption, or restricted access control (Rani et al 2023). Based on case studies and discussions with privacy officers and health care security specialists the project will try to create a risk picture that defines main threats concerning medical information systems.
System Design and Tool Selection: The next step that follows is choosing of the right tools and technology to use in putting up the monitoring system. The central technology selected for the current project is Splunk a data analysis tool for log data processing that can collect and analyse data from multiple sources in real-time (Ali et al 2023). It will then be compared with other monitoring tools to fit the system appropriately.
Proactive Monitoring and Response: The system will be evaluated in a way to periodically check the user activity on the patents record and pattern match against the normal usages, if they don’t match then it will trigger the alert (Rehman et al 2022). The project will identify parameters of so-called ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal ‘behaviour that will enable the system to alert security personnel of any attempted intrusions.
Policy and Procedure Development: Policies and Procedures for dealing with breaches when they are being witnessed will also be evaluated (Wenhua et al 2023). Such compliance tools will entail matters such as reaction to incidents, data handling, GDPR compliance and employee training.
The report is structured as follows: Chapter 2: Background Research reviews previous literature on monitoring data breaches focusing on Challenges, technologies, and practices in healthcare. Chapter 3: Requirements Analysis and Specification provides the system with functional and non-functional specifications, features, users and security measures. Chapter 4: Software Design describes the technology environment and exactly how the breaches will be managed and responded to.
The use of digital record in health care systems brought about by the shift from traditional paper-based documentation to enhanced Electronic Health Record (EHR) has pointed to a critical area of concern regarding safeguarding of data. This change brings benefits for patients and their medical providers, including better quality of patient treatment, more efficient clinical decision making and improved cooperation among health care workers. However, it also brings new risks that threaten the privacy of patient data and allow highly evaluated cyber threats from simple unauthorized access to massive data theft. Such breaches are not without consequences, affecting company’s profitability and reputation, as well as actual patient health risks. This chapter brings into focus the literature review done by comparing the strengths and weaknesses of monitoring and managing data breach risks within healthcare organisations. Special emphasis is being placed on Splunk, which specifically deals with logs and real-time threat detection and is famous for its abilities to process enormous amounts of data and sort out the suspicious activity using analytics.
Most health care institutions are moving from paper based environment, which may include paper-based EHR, to electronic environment to enhance patients’ care. Although these enable better clinical decision, they also create risks in terms of cyber-security (Ali et al., 2023). New studies focus on the urgent importance of what might be called smart security to protect records in the medical field. The solution to the above mentioned security concerns and overall data protection and trust in the digital health system can only be achieved with integration of sophisticated technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence.
Big data analytics directly impacts the improvement of healthcare security. Real-time data analysis as highlighted by Rehman et al. (2022), enhances the chances of reporting on various forms of an anomaly or any unauthorized access hence improving on security threats’ identification. This is more so because of the existence of software such as Splunk that is primarily designed to manage logs and detect anomalies in healthcare facilities.
(Attaran 2022) explores Blockchain monitoring can be integrated with healthcare monitoring tools to provide additional protection. While blockchain is effective in ensuring the security of stored information, Splunk for instance is useful in real time monitoring of the environment to establish breaches before actual data is infected. There exist such gaps in the current healthcare data security frameworks to which the integration of these technologies could connect as a single link. (Wenhua et al. 2023) discusses several health IT innovations in light of compliance tools and GDPR. Promoting the proactive surveillance systems that are used to check for any infringement of the law.
There are enhanced cybersecurity risks in the recent past, with the more use of digital healthcare records and data breaches. Analyzing hacking breaches from 2005 to 2018, (Hammouchi et al. 2022) found that the number of data breaches increased year by year. This work also supports the argument that modern organisations require advanced real-time monitoring solutions that can effectively respond to modern cyber threats.
To tackle the problem of data security within health care, different solutions have been recommended such as the encryption systems as well as encompassing monitoring systems. Out of all the programs, Splunk is particularly amazing at analyzing massive amounts of logs in real-time helping identify possible breaches. Traditional monitoring systems do not have capabilities such as analytics, real time anomaly detection, and flexibility that allows Splunk to be perfectly designed to meet the unique needs of the healthcare industry.
The challenge related to proving the necessity of compliance tools, stating that most of the solutions are not compliant. Still, Splunk deals with this problem by presenting distinct data providing concerning reporting as well as Audit trail capabilities with GDPR and comparable legislations (Abdulmalek et al., 2022). Stressing on the fact that distributed monitoring systems can have a quicker response to the incidents and can minimise the damage, which is basically implemented by Splunk as real-time alerts and patterns. Furthermore Splunk has its disadvantages as well like large financial expenses and a long time required for training are critical issues for smaller organisations. Also, the use of any monitoring tool may be influenced by the configuration it was set and the quality of the baseline data that monitors for anomalies.
| Solution | Pros | Cons |
| Encryption Systems | Protects data during transmission and storage. | Limited protection if credentials are compromised. |
| Traditional Monitoring Systems | Basic monitoring capabilities. | Lacks real-time analytics, anomaly detection, and flexibility needed for healthcare systems. |
| Splunk | Real-time log analysis, anomaly detection, GDPR compliance, and robust reporting. | High costs, extensive training, and dependency on data quality for optimal results. |
Table 1: Evaluation Table
(Source: Self-created)
This work is based on evaluating and introducing an effective and highly specific data breach monitoring system for the healthcare industry. The system relies on Splunk software, which is a fast real-time log analysis and monitoring to address possible data breaches. That is why the project covers a wide range of aspects associated with the analysis and prevention of breaches and their consequences in terms of the firm’s financial losses, tarnished reputation, and disrupted business processes (Attaran , 2022). Through the analysis of such effects, the project has the goal of establishing a sound approach that is proactive in recognizing loopholes in healthcare information systems. An important part of this system is the application of additional security systems, including multi-factor authentication and data encryption that improve the security.
The system, which is expected to analyse data gathered from several sources in real-time and flag out abnormality in patterns, should reduce the response time and the extent of loss. Besides, this long-sighted approach does not only suit present shortcomings of the healthcare cybersecurity but also creates conditions for the constant enhancement based on the actual practice in such a manner that leads to invention and strengthening of defensive measures in the face of the new threats. Using data in patient records, network logs, threat intelligence, the project implements a platform in Splunk for breach detection and monitoring. It is intended to lower response time, manage risks, and improve security measures such as multi-factor authentication and encryption prepared to counter threats’ continual evolution.
Essentially, Splunk is selected as the main utility for this work due to its efficiency in log data analysis and real-time monitoring. Notably, Splunk’s deep analytical and machine learning algorithms can easily identify suspicious activities with low chance of false alarms and short response time unlike conventional systems. Thus, the theoretical framework of this project is based on such methodologies as anomaly detection and behavioral patterns. Being able to set standards for typical and atypical activity allows the system to detect threats before they test into more serious threats. It also complements the work of authors who suggest variable and flexible monitoring structures to address the issue (Mijwil et al. 2023). Thus, the extensive deployment of additional instruments as encryption software and multi-factor authentication is justified by the desirability of increasing overall security. The need to use technologies in an integrated manner which is the approach that has been taken in this project.
There is also a rising trend of digitization in the various sectors and among them is the health sector which has been enhanced through enhancing the health care and clinical applications. As a result of the mentioned digitization, new threat and risk, especially in case of personal and sensitive medical records, appear. To meet such concerns, tools such as splunk are appropriate as they enable the analysis of logs in real-time and detection of abnormalities. Regarding security, Splunk is capable of analyzing large volumes of data and finding relationships that could be a sign of a breach. Therefore, Splunk helps prevent breaches by defining what can be considered normal user behavior and what is utterly abnormal to capture and protect healthcare information(Paul et al,2023). This approach is consistent with the socio-technical framework where both technical and human components are combined to address a threat. It is also supported by additional measures, like system encryption and multi-factor identification of the user.
| Tool | Pros | Cons |
| Splunk | Advanced analytics, machine learning, real-time monitoring, and GDPR compliance. | High costs and steep learning curve. |
| SolarWinds | Cost-effective and user-friendly. | Limited machine learning capabilities. |
| ELK Stack | Open-source and customizable. | Requires more manual setup and lacks built-in compliance features. |
Table 2: Evaluation Table
(Source: Self-created)
This chapter examines the results of the survey that was conducted to understand the perception and the awareness of individuals within the healthcare organizations of growing risks related to data breaches. The 15 questions for the survey were asked and 30 participants were asked to give their responses (Shahid et al. 2022). Analysis of the findings is made to understand general perception on cybersecurity risks, and the role of electronic health records (EHRs), as well as the significance of proactive rather than reactive approaches in protecting healthcare data. Attention is given to how tools, such as Splunk, can be used for real time monitoring and suspicious activity detection (Miller and Singh, 2022). Further, tasks are examined on the need for multi factor authentication, employee training, and the preparedness of healthcare institutions with regards to processing such data breaches.
With data breaches as the focus, the survey was created to learn the general perception of cybersecurity risks in the healthcare sector. It asked 15 questions ranging from how healthcare organizations are eliminating use of paper to the move toward digital health records, to which security measures are used to protect data and what would happen if a data breach occurred in a healthcare organization.
For this, responses were gathered from 30 people (healthcare professional, cybersecurity expert) who had their say on the level of data security in the healthcare institutions as it is right now.
3.2.1 Real-time Data Breach Detection and Alert System
The real-time user access logs are monitored by the system which detects unusual activity behavior patterns including unauthorized access attempts and unusual login patterns (Basil et al. 2022). The system uses Splunk to process large datasets effectively for analysis purposes. The system sends automatic alerts to security personnel through notifications that contain essential breach information about user IDs and their activity times together with activity types.
3.2.2 User Authentication and Access Control
Security of sensitive data requires strong user authentication management systems to protect it. The security measures consist of two-step verification with biometric identification technology to enforce security standards (Praveen et al. 2022). The system adopts strong password policies to protect system resources. The healthcare facility controls access to patient records through Role-based Access Control (RBAC) by letting administrators establish roles which determine how users access data.
One of the large leaps in the modernization of the healthcare system has been the shift from paper to electronic health records or EHRs. That said, however, it has introduced new cybersecurity risks as well. The survey included one question related to whether it had reduced or increased the risk of cyber threats as paper gave way to electronic health records.
Issues revolved around the issue of storing and transmitting sensitive health information in an unencrypted manner which might be accessed by unauthorised individuals unless they are properly secured. 25 % of respondents answered ‘Maybe’, suggesting they were aware of the pros and cons of digital records, and are ambivalent.
The dangers of electronic health records are recognized, but the large majority of respondents agreed that EHRs must be introduced. "Is electronic health records necessary even if it means the implementation is associated with the risk?" Well over 70% of participants responded "Yes." But they pointed out the many benefits derived from EHRs: faster patient care, quicker access to medical records, better coordination among healthcare providers.
3.5.1 Perception and Awareness of Unauthorized Access Threats
The respondents from the healthcare industry are aware of the detrimental effects of unauthorized access to patient data, as 85% of them noted their severity (Kumar et al., 2024). Majority of respondents show how they firmly understand how insecure the patient privacy is due to compromised medical data. As mentioned above, increase in the rate of unauthorized access on data has put pressure on the health care organizations to enhance data security in ways that focus on the detection of the intruder and prevention of access in the first instance. Such a trend reveals that adequate security measures should be implemented in order to prevent important patient information from exposure to any emerging security threats.
3.5.2 Tools and Preparedness for Data Breach Detection
Real-time monitoring through Splunk combined with other tools has become a standard practice for healthcare organizations to detect suspicious activities in their operations. These systems enable performance of user behavioral analysis and detect irregularities which trigger rapid security alerts to personnel. The evaluation finds that proper implementation of multi-factor authentication should be combined with thorough employee training and detailed response plans to properly address data breach situations. Medical facilities need to stay ahead of security measures for patient information.
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The participants were also sought to understand their views as to the extent to which current security measures are effective in preventing data breaches. The questions like "Do you think that steps such as encryption, are a multi factor authentication, will be enough to protect healthcare from data breaches?" garnered mixed responses. Over 40% of respondents said that they thought existing security encryption, multi factor authentication (MFA) was working to minimise such data breaches. But 45 percent of participants picked 'Maybe,' suggesting some uncertainty about how effective existing security measures are.
Monitoring unauthorized access in real time is a significant component of any effective detection and response to unauthorized access. When asked if Healthcare organizations should invest more in real time monitoring systems that detect and prevent unauthorized access, 75 percent of respondents said 'Yes.' That’s indicative of the realization that it’s increasingly necessary to proactively monitor for suspicious activity to catch it before it becomes a data breach.
Healthcare organizations are concerned for the financial and reputational consequences of data breaches. 80% of respondents answered "Yes" when asked whether a data breach can lead to substantial financial losses to health care institutions. It shows how popular it is to think that data breaches are going to cost a lot in the form of fines, legal fees, and compensation for individual victims. 85 percent of the respondents in healthcare answer "Yes" when asked if data breaches in healthcare have a reputation hurting side effect (Simmons and Park, 2022). It points to how vital is patient trust and how much damage a data breach can do to a healthcare organization's reputation.
It also asked people their opinions on how automated systems can help reduce the risk of data breaches happening. About a majority (65 percent) respondents said 'Yes' to the proposition that automated systems would enable downsizing human error and bolster data security. But 25 percent said 'Maybe' because they admitted that while automation can also be good, it would not be a perfect solution.
3.10 Conclusion
A strong awareness of the risks data breaches pose in healthcare organisations is revealed in the survey results. Most respondents think that electronic health records are vital for current healthcare, while there’s still a lot of concern regarding cybersecurity. This suggests that there should be some kind of additional security measures like multi factor authentication, encryption, training employees and besides, real time monitoring systems like Splunk.
Ease of use and intuitive interaction have been designed into the user interface for end users. To ensure a smooth experience for survey data uploading, searching, and visualizing this has been done. It presents itself in a clean UI, with well labeled buttons for what the primary functionalities should be: Upload Data, Run Queries, and Visualize Data. To make sure it works across devices, their designers created a responsive design.
The subject of concern is timely as nursing has shifted to the use of information systems to manage its patient information, bringing privacy and security concerns. Having such big portions of information, coming from hospitals, insurances, and personal fitness applications and trackers, it is only natural that such data has to be protected from cyber threats. In this regard, the creation of the new database table structure has been done in a way that makes it easy to maintain privacy when storing and retrieving survey data using Splunk (Javaid et al. 2023). This is because Splunk has a highly sophisticated indexing system that provides for the surveys, metadata, and user interactions logs. To allow the survey data to be queried and visualized with relative ease, the survey fields are augmented so that a great deal of analysis can be performed on the survey data in real-time while patient confidential and sensitive health information can still not be compromised in any way.
The software architecture comprises three primary components which are the backend processing system, the user interface, and the database. Through a responsive design, the user interface makes it easier for users to upload, query and view survey data. Tools like Splunk are used to handle data ingestion, real time monitoring and query execution within the backend processing system to have an efficient processing and analysis of large datasets.
Robust software system for health survey data management and analysis has been evaluated to date. Major achievements include a user friendly interface, backend processing efficient for real time analysis and database structured for best indexing. With this system, an ingestion, storage, optimization visualization system is put in place to facilitate seamless ingest data, store data, visualize data and scale accordingly and dynamically.
The need for emphasis on legal, social, ethical, and professional (LSEP) considerations was stressed during which legal, social, ethical and professional (LSEP) considerations in data privacy, accessibility and ethics in healthcare analytics were emphasized. The collaborative feedback pointed out that clear communication and documentation is needed.
The rest of the work is to finish the testing, optimizing and deploying the system. The robustness, accuracy, and compliance with standards that are required, is tested. Potential bottlenecks will be addressed, and efficiency will be improved by performance optimization. Putting something into production requires the ability to package it for users and also to have detailed documentation for them. For these tasks, a phased strategy is planned, consisting of first, rigorous testing with real world data, followed by iterative improvement through feedback.
References
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