Just 59 percent of hospitals say the mobile devices clinicians use on the job are encrypted, placing these organizations at high risk for data loss, according to a report from Forrester Research.
Healthcare workers are increasingly using laptops, tablets and smartphones to access EHRs or other depositories of patient data — a recent HIMSS survey revealed about 70 percent of healthcare organizations clinicians use mobile devices to view protected health information.
However, a growing number of healthcare data breaches result from storing patient data on these all-too-mobile devices. Forrester analyst Chris Sherman told The Wall Street Journal about 78 percent of healthcare data breaches stem from a lost or stolen device.
Which means Mr. Sherman was surprised healthcare organizations aren't doing more to ensure all devices that contain patient data are encrypted or switching to a desktop and application virtualization system. "Endpoint data security must be a top priority in order to close this faucet of sensitive data," he told the Journal.
More articles on mobile security:
Why hospitals may soon have to pay for physicians', staffs' cell phone plans
Mobile Security: Why Hospitals Need to Better Protect Data
7 Recent Data Breaches