The greatest concern when using computers in counseling and career counseling and with career assessments pertains to the security and privacy of users. Just like other sectors, telehealth counseling is not spared of privacy and security lapses, thus, drawing concerns from the public on how secure is their information. Some of them question whether the government and the management of the facilities do care about managing their private information. This has come as a result of the leaked information of some of the patients and employees serving in various health care organizations in the country. It is a pity that the number of cases regarding security and/or the privacy of the patients being reported is on the rise instead of showing a decline. According to Pordelan et al., (2018), some of these privacy and security issues revolve around security of health consumers, providers of security options, and the regulatory implications.
As privacy concerns continue to take a center stage, the citizens continue to express their needs for having secure electronic system of storing their records so that they can stop living with worries and doubts regarding their information security (Counselor Carl, 2015). The National Academy of Sciences has noted these issues continue to cause a negative impact on these people, and therefore, there is a strong reason to monitor and control privacy infringements so that they can benefit in totality. In as much as electronic record keeping is necessary, it is the role of the management of various healthcare organizations to observe the privacy and security rights of people are protected.
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There are two main threats to peoples’ privacy and security, and they include organization threats and systematic threats. Organizational threats continue to draw the attention of the patients in that sometimes, the internal employees overstep their privileges to an extent of inappropriately accessing their data or some external agents secretly access the information systems through hacking of the system to access their private information (Pordelan et al., 2018). Revealing patients’ data, something they would prefer to be privately kept is quite disgustful. Secondly, the systematic threats normally rise from an insider who attacks the information flow chain and exploits every disclosed information outside the intended purpose.
Overall, privacy and security has proved to be a matter of serious concern especially in the health sector. The members of the public are losing their confidence and trust with medical staffs who instead of safeguarding and protecting their information, the overlook their ethical obligation to disclose some of the information meant to be confidential. If this is not checked, security issues will continue to discourage many from being open and trustful
Solution to the Issue
Since people have confirmed that practitioners have a hand in leaking their private records, National Academy of Sciences gives the following suggestions. First, it is essential to replace the outdated HIPAA laws. Secondly, there should autonomous health privacy audits and compliance verifications. Third, there should be a national educational campaign to encourage privacy-compliant and enlighten the public on the need to be concerned about their private information.
The fundamental issue that needs to be addressed pertains to maintaining the unmanned systems safe and secure, with no or minimal manipulation of the data so that the confidence level of people can be restored. The possibility of this relates to the steps taken by the concerned institutions and the government in bringing back that, which was lost through the invasion of privacy of information. Organizations must rise to the occasion and confidence the public that their private data is safe, and is free from manipulation or interference whatsoever. Transparency and accountability in any activity is ideal whether it is handled electronically and manually.
References
Pordelan, N., Sadeghi, A., Abedi, M. R., & Kaedi, M. (2018). How online career counseling changes career development: A life design paradigm. Education and Information Technologies , 23 (6), 2655-2672.
Counselor Carl. (2015). The Pros and Cons of Online Therapy and Online Counseling. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=tFyjldCthZ8&feature=emb_logo
