EHR Vulnerability Reporting issues

For those who actually bother to read to the bottom of my bio, I was actually in Internet Security before going into Health IT. I spoke at DefCon and everything.

During my career in Health IT I have had to report a security vulnerability to an EHR developer once, and it was such a painful process that I basically just gave up.

My poor friend Josh Mandel and his group at SMART found an XSLT vulnerability in an HL7 provided file that is a part of essentially every modern EHR system (the standard, if not the file itself, is mandated my Meaningful Use).

They have had a horrible time trying to get the attention of the major EHR vendors, with less than 10% paying any real attention.

I am saddened, but not at all surprised. I will write more later…

-FT