We are pleased to announce that Aetna has been appointed to our Board of Directors! With its long-standing leadership in healthcare innovation and commitment to keeping consumer data safe, Aetna is an ideal fit as the first healthcare service provider to join the Alliance’s strategy-setting body. We’re confident that Aetna’s addition to the Alliance will help put FIDO authentication on the map in the healthcare industry where simpler, stronger authentication is desperately needed.
“Providing our customers with a simple, secure and transparent digital authentication experience that is consistent across devices and applications is a top priority for us in this mobile age,” said Jim Routh, Chief Security Officer of Aetna. “With our experience, influence and background, we are proud to become a board member of the FIDO Alliance and continue to develop secure authentication solutions for the healthcare industry that can reduce the reliance on the use of insecure solutions that are based on username and passwords.”
Aetna’s addition to the FIDO Alliance is timely, as the healthcare industry continues to make digital improvements to increase efficiency and quality of care, particularly through making information and services accessible online and via mobile apps.
With this increase of sensitive data available online, commonly accessed through usernames and passwords, we’ve seen a dramatic jump in healthcare information compromised by data breaches. In 2015, the IRTC reported that a staggering 66.7% of all records compromised in data breaches were in the healthcare industry; in 2014, this number was only 9.7%.
And given that 95% of all web app attacks involve harvesting credentials from user devices and then logging into web applications with them, there is a clear and present need to strengthen authentication to online healthcare services. Using FIDO standards for device-based, easy-to-use, privacy-respecting strong authentication can protect access to online healthcare services and prevent scalable attacks on user credentials.
The FIDO Alliance has started to see traction in the healthcare industry, which today has more than 100 FIDO Certified products at their disposal to deploy FIDO authentication technology. Along with Aetna’s board appointment, we also recently had the Healthcare and Public Health Information Sharing Center (NH-ISAC) join as a liaison organization, while MedImpact Healthcare Systems had the first deployment of FIDO standards in healthcare for access to its Physician Access Portal.
We are looking forward to working with Aetna to continue this traction, and to have further engagement throughout the healthcare industry to put it squarely on the path towards universal strong authentication using the open FIDO standards. To learn more about how FIDO fits into the healthcare ecosystem, join us on February 25 at 11:00 – 12:00 pm eastern for a webinar “Critical Care: The Importance of Stronger Authentication in Healthcare.”
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