In the Wild Threat to your Point of Care Devices

A new threat is in the wild that can attack your point of care devices if they have Bluetooth enabled. This new threat is called BlueBorne and it uses Bluetooth to silently and covertly take over your Android, iOS or Windows device and provides the hacker virtually full control over the device, including data theft, screen captures and more so even if your data is encrypted, is still isn’t completely safe. This threat only requires that the devices Bluetooth be enabled, which is the case for many mobile devices since you use it with a stylus, mouse, pair it with your car and more. This video gives you an idea of just how easy it is for a hacker to use this exploit to take over an Android phone and some of the types of things they can do with it.

This is why it is so important that you keep your devices up to date and apply the latest updates from Google, Apple and Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft released a patch for this vulnerability in Windows on September 12 but if you haven’t applied this update yet, your device is still vulnerable. HIPAA regulations require you to keep your devices secure and part of that is making sure the devices are kept up to date with the latest security patches. Most operating system vendors supply these, but not all users are good about making sure they get applied to their device and of course some devices are running older versions of the operating systems and are no longer being updated.

To keep your agency compliant, we highly recommend that you consider Mobile Device Management (MDM) that can allow you to monitor mobiles devices with sensitive patient data and make sure they are kept up to date, have the latest anti-malware and more. HealthWare can help you determine what is needed to keep your devices save and offers a comprehensive set of options for device management. Don’t wait until it is too late and a device has leaked confidential patient information, secure your devices now. Call us at 850-479-9035 or visit us at https://www.healthware.com/contactus.