Healthcare is expensive. It isn’t only pricey for the individual, but it can be costly for those who track healthcare records electronically too. Software is not generally cheap and a major transition to electronic healthcare records is underway. As a result, medical practices and others need software to do this. A popular, some may say the most popular management software is called OpenEMR. And it’s free! Unfortunately, this open source software that can run on many operating systems was recently found to be flawed. Several vulnerabilities were discovered by researchers and fifteen of them were rated “high severity” in the report from Project Insecurity.
The issues include an authentication bypass problem that may allow an attacker to access the patient portal, bugs that could allow remote code execution, privilege escalation, and some various file read and write issues. These are not insignificant.
Great news is that all of these have patches available. Therefore, if your organization is using OpenEMR, get right to installing those. You can get them and a lot of technical information directly from OpenEMRs website.
Remember that many scammers like to use the idea of patches or updates to do damage to a network or system. They will get popup notifications onto a screen hoping someone will click them thinking they are getting legitimate patches. Unfortunately, sometimes that isn’t the case. So, go directly to the product’s website or do a system restart. Real updates will usually show up when a machine is restarted. In any case, do some research to make sure before applying any patches. Just make sure you do it soon after patches for any products are released.
For banks and credit unions
Share this article with your members
Copy a ready-made summary and link for your newsletter, website or social posts.
