Patient privacy at risk with microcomputing
With the development of technology, hand-held devices such as Palm Pilots, Pocket PCs, RIMs and smartphones have become a a greater and better choice for people in medical industry as they are small, portable and comfortable.
However, the risks associated with these devices cannot be ignored as they can lead to leakage of patient’s confidential records if the there is a loss, theft or virus in the device. This can lead to HIPAA violations leading to heavy penalties.
With the growth of microcomputing and storage devices, the concept of classifying these devices as “personal” and “non-threatening,” is now unacceptable. The risk is complex and is becoming increasingly dangerous 30 percent of these devices are lost each year. Further, Gartner predicts that through 2006, 90 percent of mobile devices containing enterprise data will have insufficient power-on protection and storage encryption to withstand casual to moderate hacker attacks. Gartner recommends that enterprises immediately start addressing their mobile storage risks.
The need for today is to develop a method to integrate mobile device security and data protection as part of an overall compliance process and policy and implement cost-effective, low-maintenance technologies to quickly and easily extend their existing security policies and practices to these devices. At the same time, this must be done transparently to the device’s end users.
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