Although smartphones are becoming commonplace in hospitals and health systems' communication strategies, pagers are still around. However, a report from Trend Micro finds pager technology is not secure and can be easily viewed or manipulated by outside parties.
The report, called "Leaking Beeps: Unencrypted Pager Messages in the Healthcare Industry," observed pager messages to analyze the types of information being passed between pagers, as well as to see how well pager technology might be able to withstand a hacker's threat.
Researchers analyzed four months of pager activity, which included nearly 55 million records of pages, more than 2 million of which (11 percent) came from the healthcare industry.
Here are four key findings from the report.
1. About one-third of data and information sent between pagers is alphanumeric, comprising the largest share of content.
2. Researchers found they were often able to identify medical reference numbers in pages. Additionally, 28 percent of pages contained emails, 23 percent contained medical terms, 18 percent contained names, 14 percent contained syndromes and diagnoses and 6 percent contained medications.
3. Researchers indicate pagers are often not encrypted or don't have authentication, so it can be easy to send false pages. Researchers bought pagers for an internal study and sent false messages to them. They were successful in doing so, indicating anyone could potentially send a false message to a clinician with a pager, compromising data integrity.
4. Practices to mitigate security issues related to pagers include encrypting communication, authenticating the source of pages and not transmitting multiple factors of protected health information.
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