It should come as no surprise that data in healthcare settings is sensitive and requires special security considerations. In the modern healthcare environment, mobile devices are becoming the standard for daily operations for workers. This makes securing mobile devices in healthcare that much more essential.
Read on to learn more about mobile device use in healthcare, common security measures, and what role HIPAA plays in developing security policies.
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Read the complete guide on securing data for mobile devices
The Increasing Threat of Mobile Devices in Healthcare
Mobile devices provide healthcare professionals new ways to treat patients and engage with medical records. The nature of these devices in healthcare is becoming more integrated into daily patient care, communicating with medical equipment and background IT processes. With all the changes that these devices bring to the medical industry, they also present some significant threats.
With around 90% of doctors surveyed in research done by Internal Medical Journal claiming they use their mobile devices in a clinical setting, security is fastly becoming the prime concern for IT administrators and management looking to keep patients’ records and other medical data secure. It has also thrust into the conversation questions about privacy standards.
Protecting Patient’s Information
With many healthcare institutions opting for a bring your own device (BYOD) policy toward mobile devices, the fact is that mobile security policies may not be as strict and enforceable. Questions surrounding what risks are inherent in mobile security policies like this are important to tackle when healthcare professionals use their devices to do things like capture pictures or videos of patients in a clinical setting.
Consent might be understood in terms of the necessity for photos and videos of patients regarding proper clinical care. Still, mobile devices present a new avenue for threats, vulnerabilities and leaks of personal information. It may never be the intention of the healthcare worker to release a patient’s information, but since vulnerabilities exist across the mobile technology stack, threats are always present.
Popular mobile applications like Instagram, Facebook and iCloud, among others, often enable permissions across a device to gain access to things like photos, videos and documents. Patient data, then, may inadvertently be shared on social media or other unsecured networks.
Mobile applications may also be an entry point leveraged by attackers to access hospital networks. One can’t deny the usefulness of mobile devices in healthcare, but IT admins, management and workers need to understand the risks and manage security to tackle these modern problems.
Mobile Devices and HIPAA Compliance
HIPAA-covered entities must implement a mobile device security policy to ensure that patient information is safe and secure. Unfortunately, with all the risks involved in using mobile devices in the workplace, this is often easier said than done. Nevertheless, HIPAA compliance and data security are fastly becoming the prime concerns for hospital management and IT professionals.
Even in environments where device security is a primary concern, situations may still arise where HIPAA violations may occur. It’s just too easy for healthcare workers to make simple mistakes that lead to the leaking or vulnerability of patient information — like using public Wi-Fi, phishing attempts or malware attacks.
Combine this with the fact that mobile healthcare devices often lack the security control needed to mitigate common threats, and you can see why HIPAA and mobile device security are becoming increasingly important for healthcare networks.
Best Practices for Securing Mobile Devices in Healthcare
When it comes to keeping mobile devices secure and staying HIPAA compliant, end-users and hospital administrators should follow some key best practices. Before that, though, teams should perform a thorough risk assessment of the current state of mobile security in the workplace. This is not only a mandatory requirement for HIPAA but also the only way to fully address the wide breadth of threats that face mobile devices, healthcare information, and patients’ personal information.
The risk assessment should encompass the entire IT infrastructure, not just mobile devices. This includes items like:
- Company policies
- Administrative practices
- Physical security controls
A risk assessment is only the first step and one that your IT staff should take fairly regularly to combat evolving threats. Other practices teams should consider include:
- Staff training — End-users are often the biggest factor in keeping devices secure. Regular staff training on best security practices gives them the information they need to be safe.
- Information controls — Teams should know about every device on their network and incorporate policies that regulate who has access to patient information.
- Encryption — While HIPAA encryption guidelines are somewhat lean, the best way to protect data, and mitigate the risk of violation, is to consider data encryption for all data stored on mobile devices.
- Remote data wiping — Device theft and loss are big security threats. Ensuring that devices have remote wipe capabilities means data is secure even if the device’s location is unknown.
- Password policies — With around 80% of data breaches tracing back to weak password protection, implementing robust password security policies is an easy way to stay secure.
- Device maintenance — Keeping up with all operating system updates means devices will always be current regarding security patches. Teams should develop a system to automatically perform updates and patches. A single unmaintained device can be an easy entry point for attackers.
Securing mobile devices in healthcare requires a system of policies that are constantly evolving to meet the growing threat landscape. This component of network security policies is becoming the main threat surface for attackers looking to steal information or access secure networks. In healthcare, the added threat of violating HIPAA means ignoring mobile device security comes at the cost of patients’ confidentiality — and at the cost of the institution through hefty violation fines.
Staying Safe with Archon Mobile
Archon Mobile is more than just a set of security measures. We design our platform to offer the best security features without compromising the user experience. While we built Archon Mobile with strict commercial solutions for classified (CSfC) guidelines in mind, community-of-internet settings, like in healthcare, can also benefit tremendously from our platform. To learn more about Archon Mobile and our security solutions, reach out today.
