Devices & Hardware News

Bring Your Own Device Policies Benefit from Security Platform

By Vera Gruessner

- One of the ongoing challenges taking place among hospitals, clinics, and other industries as well is the legal implications around using personal mobile devices in the workplace. Healthcare organizations that allow physicians, nurses, and other healthcare staff to utilize their own mobile devices would be wise to also include a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy throughout their network.

Bring Your Own Device Policy

Even in other industries, the trend toward BYOD is growing and affecting workplace politics, according to the Credit Union Times. However, companies that are not instituting Bring Your Own Device policies could be implicating their facility in legal troubles for years to come. With the HIPAA rule requiring patient data to remain safe and secure, BYOD policies are even more important for the healthcare sector.

“In general, unfortunately, the technology is still running ahead of the ability of some of these institutions to keep up with policies that they should have,” Michael D. Lozoff, attorney and partner at Shutts & Bowen in Miami, told the news source. “We run into all kinds of questions that sometimes surprise us to the extent that the institutions have not addressed something as basic as BYOD.”

As previously reported by mHealthIntelligence.com, healthcare facilities that permit physicians to follow the Bring Your Own Device program will need sufficient patient data privacy and security strategies. As BYOD continues to expand throughout various industries, interoperability opportunities will also arise as well as the potential for cloud-based mobile health applications.

The data security firm Fortinet recently announced that it has created the FortiGuard Mobile Security subscription service for consumers to protect their smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices from cyberattacks and other data privacy issues. The organization looks to protect wireless networks as more companies move toward using mobile devices and applications.

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The Bring Your Own Device movement will clearly be impacted by the mobile security platform developed by Fortinet, as companies may begin implementing the service and others continue to develop BYOD privacy and security policies to protect patient health data within the medical sector.

“IT infrastructure is evolving constantly with BYOD, cloud, SDN, hybrid WAN and secure WLAN, making the enterprise more flexible, yet at the same time exposing new points of entry for the malicious attacks,” John Maddison, Vice President of Marketing Products at Fortinet, said in a public statement. “Our new mobile application control and mobile malware protection service integrated into the network, and particularly WLAN, provide enterprises globally with the visibility and control they need over mobile devices to protect their corporate assets, especially in BYOD environments.”

Clearly, this new strategy could be a very useful solution to combatting cyberattacks at healthcare organizations that have adopted a Bring Your Own Device policy. Regardless of what type of security services a healthcare organization implements, the most important step is to develop an effective privacy and security strategy within the BYOD policy that prevents cyberattacks.One of the ongoing challenges taking place among hospitals, clinics, and other industries as well is the legal implications around using personal mobile devices in the workplace. Healthcare organizations that allow physicians, nurses, and other healthcare staff to utilize their own mobile devices would be wise to also include a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy throughout their network.

Even in other industries, the trend toward BYOD is growing and affecting workplace politics, according to the Credit Union Times. However, companies that are not instituting Bring Your Own Device policies could be implicating their facility in legal troubles for years to come. With the HIPAA rule requiring patient data to remain safe and secure, BYOD policies are even more important for the healthcare sector.

“In general, unfortunately, the technology is still running ahead of the ability of some of these institutions to keep up with policies that they should have,” Michael D. Lozoff, attorney and partner at Shutts & Bowen in Miami, told the news source. “We run into all kinds of questions that sometimes surprise us to the extent that the institutions have not addressed something as basic as BYOD.”

READ MORE: US Senators Support Permanent Telehealth Access Through Legislation

As previously reported by mHealthIntelligence.com, healthcare facilities that permit physicians to follow the Bring Your Own Device program will need sufficient patient data privacy and security strategies. As BYOD continues to expand throughout various industries, interoperability opportunities will also arise as well as the potential for cloud-based mobile health applications.

The data security firm Fortinet recently announced that it has created the FortiGuard Mobile Security subscription service for consumers to protect their smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices from cyberattacks and other data privacy issues. The organization looks to protect wireless networks as more companies move toward using mobile devices and applications.

The Bring Your Own Device movement will clearly be impacted by the mobile security platform developed by Fortinet, as companies may begin implementing the service and others continue to develop BYOD privacy and security policies to protect patient health data within the medical sector.

“IT infrastructure is evolving constantly with BYOD, cloud, SDN, hybrid WAN and secure WLAN, making the enterprise more flexible, yet at the same time exposing new points of entry for the malicious attacks,” John Maddison, Vice President of Marketing Products at Fortinet, said in a public statement. “Our new mobile application control and mobile malware protection service integrated into the network, and particularly WLAN, provide enterprises globally with the visibility and control they need over mobile devices to protect their corporate assets, especially in BYOD environments.”

Clearly, this new strategy could be a very useful solution to combatting cyberattacks at healthcare organizations that have adopted a Bring Your Own Device policy. Regardless of what type of security services a healthcare organization implements, the most important step is to develop an effective privacy and security strategy within the BYOD policy that prevents cyberattacks.

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