Keeping patient data safe with open source tools

Healthcare is experiencing a revolution. In a tightly regulated and ancient industry, the use of free and open source software make it uniquely positioned to see a great deal of progress. I work at a scrappy healthcare startup where cost savings are a top priority. Our primary challenge is how to safely and efficiently manage personally identifying information (PII), like names, addresses, insurance information, etc., and personal health information (PHI), like the reason for a recent clinical visit, under the regulations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, HIPAA, which became mandatory in the United States in 2003.

Security Leftovers

• Indian Bank Hit in $13.5M Cyberheist After FBI ATM Cashout Warning

  But according to Indian news outlet Dailypionneer.com, there was a second attack carried out on August 13, when the Cosmos Bank hackers transferred nearly $2 million to the account of ALM Trading Limited at Hang Seng Bank in Hong Kong.

• How to Protect Yourself Against a SIM Swap Attack

  A sobering caveat: If a skilled SIM hijacker targets you, there’s realistically not much you can do to stop them, says Allison Nixon, threat research at security firm Flashpoint. “In most of the cases that we’ve seen, a sufficiently determined attacker can take over someone’s online footprint,” she says.

  That’s because ultimately, the machinations behind SIM swaps are largely out of your control. [...]

• Open Source Security Podcast: Episode 110 - Review of Black Hat, Defcon, and the effect of security policies

  Josh and Kurt talk about Black Hat and Defcon and how unexciting they have become. What happened with hotels at Defcon, and more importantly how many security policies have 2nd and 3rd level effects we often can't foresee. We end with important information about pizza, bananas, and can openers.

YunoHost 3.0.0.1

At this point I have only set up YunoHost, created a few user accounts and installed a handful of applications. While I may play with it further, my main focus going into this trial was how well the framework of the distribution functions. That is: is it easy to install, how hard is it for new users to add services and accounts, and is it straight forward to keep the system up to date? Basically, I wanted to know whether I could give this distribution to someone who wanted to set up home-based network services for the first time and expect them to be able to use it. Based on my experiences so far with YunoHost, my answer is: probably. The distribution does make it pretty easy to create user accounts and install web-based services. In fact, YunoHost does this quite well. The admin panel is very streamlined, uncluttered and easy to navigate and getting something like a game of Hextris or a media streaming service installed is about as easy as a few mouse clicks. Managing the firewall, monitoring the system and creating backups are nearly as easy. The administrator still needs to figure out how to get backup archives off the disk to another location for safe keeping, but the bulk of the work in backing up and restoring the operating system is done for us. Where I feel the distribution runs into trouble is mostly little details, and a few general concepts. For example, asking the user to create an "admin" password but leaving the root password as the default is both likely to confuse people and leave a permanent security hole on the servers of most inexperienced hobbyist administrators. On the topic of accounts, it makes sense, from a security standpoint, to separate web accounts from system accounts. But, this means there may be some confusion as to why, once an account has been created, it cannot log into the system. Little concepts like this may throw new users and I don't feel these issues are well addressed by the documentation. The first time through, the system installer failed during the partitioning section. It worked the second time though with the same settings, so I'm not sure if this is a semi-persistent bug or a one-time error with my system. On the whole, YunoHost performs well. It's light on resources, it offers a lot of common network services home administrators will probably want and it is pretty easy to run and maintain. There are a few little wrinkles in the experience, but in general I found the distribution to be straight forward to use. For people looking to set up a home server, this is probably a good platform on which to build.

Software: GIMP, Password Safe, and Podcasts

• GIMP 2.10.6 Introduces Vertical Text, New Filters, and GIMP Extension Public Repo

  A brand-new point release for popular photo editing software GIMP has been released today, bringing GIMP to version 2.10.6 – this update doesn’t bring a whole load of significant features, but there are some great improvements and new functionalities. For starters, GIMP 2.10.6 finally introduces support for vertical text (top to bottom), which has been a highly requested feature particularly for East-Asian writing systems. Thus, users can now set text in mixed orientation (as is typical in East-Asian vertical writing) or upright orientation (more common for Western vertical writing), with right-to-left, as well as left-to-right columns.

• Password Safe is a KeePass-Compatible Password Manager for Linux

  Password Safe is an open-source KeePass-compatible password manager for Linux, designed specifically for use on the GNOME desktop.

• Linux users finally get a decent podcasts app called, well, ‘Podcasts’

  Podcasts are a hugely popular form of “infotainment” these days, with almost any and every niche you can think of catered for with a show or a segment. If you’re not enjoying the wealth of podcasts out there, you’re really missing out. Podcasts provide you with the experience of a radio show, covering a wide range of topics ranging from gospel to science fiction to music and every thing in between. There are so many ways to enjoy your podcst. On mobile, popular apps such as PocketCast offer users a one-stop-shop for all the podcasts you can listen to. Many music streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify offer dedicated sections on Podcasts.