Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Protective Measures Used By New York Network Security Firm Offer Healthcare IT Security Solutions

By Lonnie Trevarthen


A computer system that is set up to serve the needs of a health care organization has a big responsibility. It is in charge of the confidential medical records of a large group of patients. Therefore, a New York Network Security Company must be especially diligent.

Some of these systems can be protected sufficiently by assigning a name and password for all who are allowed access to it. The policies are put in place by the systems administrator. He or she will monitor the data to prevent use by unauthorized personnel.

A variety of factors keep the information private. First, the health care organization will use its own private network. Each employee is allowed access to the information required to perform his or her job.

The records kept by a hospital, physician or health care clinic are very sensitive. Employees may have access only to limited information. The higher someone is in the hierarchy of employees, the more information he or she will be allowed to access.

One-factor authentication is the lowest level of protection. This requires someone to have a name and password to access data. As you would imagine, this is not stringent enough for a health care organization.

Two-factor authenticating requires one more layer. A name and password are needed, plus a software token, such as a picture. But, this is still not a strong enough deterrent against hackers.

A three-factor authentication provides much more stringent precautionary action. The user must enter a name, password and software token. In addition a fingerprint or retinal scan may be necessary to gain access.

Although a firewall is in place, all viruses may not be kept from invading the system. It may still be hacked by those who illegally obtain information. This would not be done by an employee, but, rather someone outside the company.

Any health care system requires all aforementioned precautions and possibly more. For example, some systems can automatically require employees to change their passwords regularly. If an employee forgets his or her password, as will inevitably happen, a new one can only be set in the presence of supervisors.




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