Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 - (Page 18)

SECURITY HARDWIRED AGAINST CRIME When you purchase a new laptop, you are buying a blank slate, although standard software, such as Microsoft Ofﬁce, is often already installed. But the extra protection you’ll need to prevent unauthorized access to the patient information that will soon populate your computer’s hard drive is most often purchased in the form of additional software that you must select and install yourself. Such installation is usually quite easy, but you may want to consider upping the ante by purchasing a computer hardwired against unauthorized use. Sprague says “the ﬁrst and most simplistic” protective action any practice can take is to encrypt the data stored in their computers. “If a laptop walks out the door, and there is data stored on that laptop, you want to ensure it’s not lost,” he says. “So whole-disk encryption of your data is very important.” To that end, Sprague advises practices to opt for corporate-model computers over consumer ones: “Speciﬁcally say to your vendor: ‘I want to buy a machine with hardware-based, full-disk encryption,’” he says. “The extra cost is small, so it’s a relatively inexpensive option for a small ofﬁce that wants to know that its data are encrypted on its hard drives.” If your ofﬁces’ hard drives aren’t encrypted and upgrading your machines isn’t in your short-term business plan, you can purchase software to encrypt your current hard drives. Sprague says that although software-based encryption isn’t as foolproof as hardware-based encryption, “it works reasonably effectively.” But to completely secure your data, you need to go even beyond encryption. Consider the following plausible scenario: En route to your house after work, you stop at a grocery store to pick up some essentials. In your back seat is a laptop from the ofﬁce that you’ve neglected to keep from sight. When you return with your groceries, your car window is smashed and the laptop is gone — a computer containing many of your patients’ much of your computer activity. If your computer is like most on the market, your personal authentication information is in there somewhere — hidden deep, though not so much so that it can’t be retrieved by a knowledgeable and determined techie. The key is to keep unauthorized users from ever being able to crack your passwords. Requiring authorized users to log into your network with unique user IDs and passwords should be part of your standard operating procedure, but it’s not foolproof. TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT “We’ve recovered computers for small physician offices in which we’ve sort of saved the practice, if you will, because everything was on the computer that was stolen.” John Livingston, CEO, Absolute Software personal identiﬁcation and clinical information. The worst-case scenario is upon you, and you’re at fault. Now let’s say this thief is no amateur. Before he unloads his stolen merchandise, he wants to investigate to see whether it contains any useful information. Finding himself locked out of your computer without your user ID and password, he and his friends do a little digging and ﬁnd what they are looking for on the hard drive. They enter the correct user ID and password, and … Bingo! A treasure trove of personally identiﬁable information is at t heir ﬁngertips for the taking. How did this happen? Most operating systems (Windows being the most ubiquitous) have remarkable memories and cache Such a scenario wouldn’t be possible if your new laptop was equipped with a trusted platform model, or TPM, says Sprague. He explains that a TPM “is in essence a silicon vault for keys on your laptop or desktop.” If you authenticate yourself to your computer with your user ID and password, the process takes place within that TPM chip. “So the secret is never exposed to the operating system or external memory or any of those other devices,” Sprague explains. Computers with TPM systems are also useful to IT departments that can track exactly how many computers are authorized to access your practice’s network. So if you have, say, 35 machines in your network and a WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM 18 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | TECHNOLOGY GUIDE http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 TG Cover Story: Protect Your Practice and Sleep Better Operations: Paperless? Not Quite The Internet: You've Got Mail...Or Do You? Patient Relations: Attention Grabbers The Tech Doctor: All About Blogs Lessons Learned: 'My EMR Nightmare...And Why I'd Do It Again' Scheduling: No More No-Shows The Marketplace: Who's Got Your Back IT Enhancement: Time, at Last, for an Upgrade? Online: 'Yup, I'm a Junkie. And Proud of It.' In the Office: New Technologies in the Workplace: Blessing or Curse? Web Surfing: If You Build It...

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.