A recent survey by Skycure, focused on Medicare, highlighted the increasing risk of attack to mobile devices used by doctors. Although the report is mainly US based the same problems will no doubt exist worldwide and lessons can be learned for all healthcare organizations, irrespective of location.

The report found that nearly 4% of Android devices were infected with malware – this equates to more than 27 million devices. As even more doctors are using their mobile devices to manage patient data (70% in 2015) this has worrying implications for patient confidentiality.

Lack of even basic passcode protection

The US Department of Health and Human Services said that there were more than 260 major healthcare breaches in 2015, of which 9% involved a mobile device other than a laptop. The Skycure report found that 11% of mobile devices were running an outdated OS with high-severity vulnerabilities and that 14% of the mobile devices containing patient data did not have even a passcode implemented to protect them.

SOURCE: certero.com