PHARMACY owners need to boost cyber security awareness and implement new policies to protect patient data as the rollout of electronic prescriptions continues.
Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) Clinical Reference Lead, Ben Wilkins, told a Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA) webinar that staff training was crucial to mitigate against potential data breaches.
"One of the first steps that pharmacies should take is a bit of awareness and education," he said.
"What we know is, particularly during COVID, there's been cyber security attacks and crypto-locking - that's been happening every 14 seconds."
Wilkins added that pharmacists needed to be particularly aware of their responsibilities under Notifiable Data Breach Notification legislation.
"In the past... if we sent a fax or mailed a letter to the wrong person, which was technically not appropriate under the Privacy Act, we might have navigated that and done some mitigation strategies and there weren't too many issues with it.
"In a digital world it's important to have policies in place, because there are more opportunities for breaches of privacy and security and we need to be much more mindful.
"[So] that cyber security training is really quite important to run through with your staff over the next eight or so weeks as we move from the token [e-script model] to the Active Script List."
Wilkins reiterated calls for pharmacies to ensure they have updated their IT infrastructure, warning those that have yet to switch from the Windows 7 operating system to upgrade to Windows 10 and ensure they regularly install security patches.
Cyber security awareness training is available through the ADHA's website.
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