Security in the age of the Internet of Medical Things

Securing devices, reducing points of exposure

Healthcare is rapidly moving to a completely digitized environment, and, as a result, devices have been introduced to the hospital ecosystem and bedside workflows to help extend and streamline care throughout the hospital. As hospitals move to achieve real-time visibility into their different systems and applications, reduce time away from the patient bedside, and increase the quality of care, new technology has come in to play to improve interoperability of these systems and components. Robust tools like hand-held mobile computers and smart medical devices have allowed clinicians to become more efficient and mobile with patient care. Unfortunately, this new technology has also opened the door to increased risk and new potential points of exposure for healthcare IT infrastructures.

Each network-connected device within a provider’s ecosystem opens up the possibility for patient health information (PHI) exposure as well as the potential for other unauthorized use of critical systems and applications. The result is heightened concern around HIPAA compliance, data integrity, and network and infrastructure security vulnerabilities. Today, Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) security must address the most pressing concerns for healthcare IT leaders including:

• Privacy concerns
• Poor physical security
• Unsecure mobile interfaces
• Insufficient authentication and authorization

When choosing how to prioritize resources, healthcare organizations must first take a foundational approach to securing devices: strong authentication.

Streamlined access control for network-connected devices for healthcare

Unfortunately, increased security measures can quickly turn in to clinical roadblocks as providers begin to spend more time interacting with security barriers and less time face-to-face with patients. Far too often, in an attempt to reduce the burden of manual authentication and to focus more time at the bedside, clinicians find less than secure ways to access the tools that they need for patient care, ultimately opening your organization up to even more risk.

Imprivata offers several solutions that enable healthcare organizations to balance security and convenience for IoMT devices by streamlining authentication and access controls for clinical users.