White Papers for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

Endpoint Data Protection Best Practices for Healthcare

Guardian Edge

Large healthcare providers—such as hospitals, medical groups, clinics and labs—encompass workflows and systems that are as varied as the organizational structures and histories of these highly diverse entities. Protecting data on endpoints in such widely varying environments requires the ability to work within a complex web of systems while balancing the absolute priority for patient care with the need to protect private information.From an operational perspective, hospitals are especially complex. Patients are typically brought
in by attending physicians who have an “at will” relationship with the institution and may take their customers elsewhere—much like the relationship between travel agents and hotels or airlines. Although not employed by the organization, these referring doctors require complete access to all patient data (with all the ensuing risks that external data access poses). Once in the system, patients interact their with the referring doctor as well as internal staff—physicians, lab technicians, nursing, and support personnel—and external resources according to their varying needs for surgery, tests, imaging, outpatient treatments, and expert opinions. This means hospital workflows are unique to each organization and facility, and vary greatly depending upon a specific patient’s treatment regimen. Consequently, any endpoint—laptop, PC, removable storage device, CD/DVD/ floppy, PDA or smartphone—with more than a completely stateless operation (such as a dumb terminal) may harbor private or protected data.

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