TITLE:
The Necessity of Information Security in the Vulnerable Pharmaceutical Industry
AUTHORS:
Shawn Josette Roberts
KEYWORDS:
Information Security, Pharmaceutical Industry, Health Information Security
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Information Security,
Vol.5 No.4,
September
25,
2014
ABSTRACT: The pharmaceutical
industry produces billions of dollars in sales each year. The industry is evolving
and relying on using technology more and more to conduct day-to-day business.
The pharmaceutical industry generates enormous amounts of sensitive and private
information such as medical records, employee information, financial data and
research data. This makes the pharmaceutical industry vulnerable to cybercrime.
The pharmaceutical industry has a big responsibility to stakeholders, patients,
employees and customers all over the world to ensure this information is
secure. It is imperative for organizations to budget adequate amounts of money
and resources to have effective Information Security Management. Information
Security Management is critical in the pharmaceutical industry and the
alternative of not having it would be devastating to a pharmaceutical company.
Cyber criminals can tarnish company reputations and the effects can take years
to overcome. The main contributions of this paper will be to describe the
concerns about the security of information in the pharmaceutical industry,
provide examples of organizations that are victims of cybercrime, describe
regulations in place to help reduce information security breaches and
illustrate why information security is necessary in the pharmaceutical industry.