There are many benefits when it comes to employing a BYOD program in a healthcare setting, including the convenience and employee and patient satisfaction for caregivers, as well cost savings for the healthcare facilities. Despite the benefits, there are serious information security and compliance risks when individuals use their personal devices to access applications or networks that contain patient or employee non-public personal information, including healthcare or financial-related data.
Recent changes to the HIPAA Omnibus Rule have challenged the BYOD era as it pertains to healthcare. These rules are a set of final regulations modifying HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Enforcement Rules to implement various provisions of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act.
In laymen’s terms, the enhancements to the Enforcement Rule, particularly regarding privacy breaches and penalties, come with hefty fines, therefore, BYOD in healthcare is shaky at best.
The legislation is lengthy and can be confusing, but emphasizes the fact that, when implementing BYOD, leave no security stone unturned and always know your policy and enforce it.
The folks at MaaS360 discussed this topic, and say that visibility and management are crucial to compliance. Keeping track of, protecting and updating mobile devices requires visibility into wide-reaching cellular networks that are off limits to most administrators. As users continue to access data and applications on their mobile devices, organizations will need to find a way to manage those devices for business continuity, accessibility and security reasons.
According to the MaaSters Center, policy making, multi-device and OS support, passcode enforcement, app and content management and separating work and play are the five basic steps to Ombibus compliance.
Mobile device management solutions, like that of Fiberlink’s MaaS360, makes securing networks, apps and devices rather simple, increasing security, productivity and employee satisfaction without compromising healthcare information.
Edited by Rachel Ramsey