Weak token management, predictable session IDs, or missing MFA allows attackers to impersonate doctors, patients, or administrators and access medical records.

APIs that use predictable patient IDs (sequential integers) allow attackers to enumerate and access other patients records by incrementing the ID in API requests.

APIs return complete patient objects (including diagnosis, billing, SSN) when the frontend only needs name and appointment time. Attackers intercept the full payload.

SQL, NoSQL, and LDAP injection through medical search fields, patient name inputs, or diagnosis code filters. Healthcare apps often have complex search functionality that is injection-prone.

APIs that accept patient profile updates allow attackers to modify fields they should not have access to — like changing their insurance status, doctor assignment, or access role.

Default credentials on EMR integration endpoints, verbose error messages exposing database schema, CORS wildcard allowing any origin to call patient APIs, debug mode in production.

Healthcare APIs without comprehensive audit logs cannot detect data breaches, unauthorized access patterns, or comply with regulatory requirements for access tracking.

APIs that fetch external resources (lab reports from partner labs, insurance verification) can be tricked into accessing internal systems, cloud metadata, or other patient databases.

Network Security

Application Security

Authentication & Authorization

Data Security

Monitoring & Detection

Compliance & Governance

Authentication

End-to-end encryption (AES-256), PHI access controls, comprehensive audit trails, BAA with all vendors, breach notification within 60 days, minimum necessary data principle

Penalty: Up to $1.5M per violation category per year; criminal penalties for willful neglect

Patient consent for data collection and sharing, data breach notification to authority, right to data portability and erasure, health data retention policies, appointment of data protection officer

Penalty: Up to Rs 5 crore for unauthorized data access; imprisonment up to 5 years for intentional breach

ABHA ID verification APIs, HIE consent framework integration, UHI gateway compliance, data stored on India servers only, FHIR R4 data exchange standards, digital health ID linkage

Penalty: Exclusion from national digital health ecosystem; loss of government health scheme participation

Explicit patient consent with granular controls, right to erasure (right to be forgotten), 72-hour breach notification, Data Protection Impact Assessment, cross-border transfer restrictions (adequacy decisions)

Penalty: Up to 4% of annual global turnover or 20M euros, whichever is higher

Healthcare-specific information security management, risk assessment framework for health data, access control policies aligned with clinical roles, incident management procedures, business continuity for health IT

Penalty: No direct penalty; loss of certification affects trust, insurance premiums, and partner requirements

Security, availability, processing integrity controls, continuous monitoring over 6-12 month audit period, third-party vendor risk management, change management procedures, logical access controls documentation

Penalty: No direct penalty; required by enterprise hospital chains and health insurers as vendor prerequisite