[medinformatics] Wireless Security Healthcare

[Medical Informatics News]

Hospitals have huge burdens on them with regards to protecting patient privacy, medical records maintenance and
storage, sharing patient data, and managing the thousands of other processes needed to run the business of patient
care. This report from Information Week tells us how Columbus Regional Healthcare System is increasingly using
wireless data technologies to improve productivity while simulteneously protecting the wireless network from
intrusion and eavesdropping.






But that wireless convenience and productivity comes with the burden of keeping sensitive patient information
whirling through the air secure. The hospital didn’t want to dictate what types of wireless devices doctors and
health-care professionals could use, Lewack says. So one of the first steps he took was to require hospital workers
wanting to use wireless devices to register them with the technical and communications services office before they
could use them to access the network. “We didn’t want to hinder the adoption of these devices by telling them what
devices they had to use,” Lewack says.

[...]

[Wireless] gateways provide several ways to authenticate users to the network, including using passwords and
secure wireless encrypted connections. The AirFortress gateways meet the government’s rigorous FIPS 140-2 (Federal
Information Processing Standards) security-validation program and maintains compliance with the Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act, both important factors, Lewack says. The hospital installs AirFortress secure
wireless clients on each device. The clients enable the devices to securely connect to the wireless gateways.
AirFortress clients support a wide variety of handheld devices and are easy to manage, Lewack says.


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