Wait - you accessed your doctor's computer after he left the room and downloaded data from it?
I did not poke around obviously, because I was only interested in my personal files and assumed I only had a few minutes. Could I have been 'evil' and accessed other stuff maliciously? Maybe idk.
Years before I also had root access to my entire school district's records and probably could have wiped them if I really wanted to. I'm not a hacker or programmer by any means, just a random idiot that figured out how to use ophcrack back when XP was the primary operating system. It was a different time.
Like, I'm not saying that'd solve computer security or anything, someone could still break into a locked computer. But it would definitely raise the level of effort required to access medical data up from "has a flash drive and five minutes".
I'm sure doctors get the same lock-your-workstation trainings as the rest of us, and ignore them about as often. I wonder if smartcards would be appropriate here: since doctors are typically jumping between lots of "thin-client equivalent" computers around their practice all day, could we give them smartcards that need to be physically inserted in computers in order to log in? Pull the card, computer logs you out; don't forget your card in the exam room or you can't log into the next one.
Like, I'm sure they'd have tantrums (any kind of users would, at this transition), but putting that aside: this kind of system is technically cheap and has been well-supported for decades. Would the overhead of employing it at medical practices be preventative? Is it already employed at some practices? How does it work there?
My astonishment is unrelated to IT security. Your behavior is equivalent to just sneaking into the unlocked office of your doctor and taking photos of your file.
Yeah, I'll just grab it myself. It was a standing workstation right in front of the exam table and he didn't even close the browser. Would have taken 3 seconds to lock and unlock if they cared about security.
"I topped up my bank account within 30 seconds after the bank clerk left the counter."