Security and Privacy

Few industries have greater security concerns than healthcare. From regulators and insurers to patients and the public, healthcare providers are under tremendous pressure to keep medical data kept safe and confidential. They must comply with mandates like the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States to ensure the integrity and privacy of patient information.

Medium-size providers, however, lack the substantial IT staff and budgets of large enterprises. This means that, although they require the same robust safeguards as larger medical organizations, their solutions must be affordable and easy to deploy and manage.

Data
To meet security mandates, healthcare providers must protect all aspects of their networking operations. They have to defend the enterprise network against intruders intent on accessing medical information, as well as disruptions like denial of service attacks. They need to ensure that users already on the network can retrieve only the information for which they are authorized. Additionally, they must safeguard communications with other medical facilities, pharmacies, and insurers. A security breach anywhere has costly consequences and erodes patient confidence.

Voice
Telephony is vital to healthcare. Patients call their caregivers in times of need, and medical staffs must speak with labs, clinics, pharmacies, and each other, sharing sensitive patient and business information. As with their data services, healthcare providers require strategies to keep these communications confidential. Moreover, their voice services must be resilient and always available, avoiding disruptions that jeopardize medical care and undermine patient confidence.

Wireless
Wireless solutions are ideal for expanding existing networks or providing connectivity at new sites. They lower networking costs and offer untethered communications throughout a facility. Wireless systems, however, support the same confidential medical and business data as wired LANs. Therefore, they must deliver the same levels of security. Healthcare providers need to ensure that a hacker cannot access patient records and other sensitive files via a wireless link on the LAN. They must restrict private medical and business data to authorized personnel within the organization. They need to offer caregivers the timesaving convenience of ubiquitous communications, but without jeopardizing security.