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Cloud-based mobile security specialist Marble Security is reaching out to physicians, surgeons, nurses, emergency responders and other health care professionals who want to transfer protected health information from mobile phones with the launch of Marble Messenger.
The platform enables organizations to protect patient information on mobile devices with encryption and passwords and enforce electronic protected health information (ePHI) security policies for both senders and receivers.
Since it is encrypted, patient information is also protected as it traverses the Internet or a mobile network. Additional safety is provided by an auto-destruct feature that deletes the image and text after a time limit is reached.
The Marble mobile security platform lets administrators, via the cloud, set and enforce risk-based policies, control mobile security through dashboards, and run risk analytics and compliance reports.
“Customers tell us that with Marble Messenger, they can continue to consult with other health care professionals via secure messaging while not violating HIPAA/HITECH [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act/Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act] regulations,” David Jevans, Marble Security founder and chief technology officer, said in a statement. “With the pervasive use of mobile, we are seeing interest in other sectors as well to encrypt and protect sensitive information that is routinely sent over mobile devices.”
As enterprise bring-your-own-device (BYOD) programs continue to become more commonplace, 38 percent of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016, according to a global survey of CIOs by IT research firm Gartner. As health care organizations explore programs like BYOD initiatives, there is increasing concern raised about the security on employee-owned devices and how sensitive information is stored on them and transmitted between them.
Marble addresses these problems directly with mobile-security management (MSM) functionality, essential mobile-app management (MAM) and mobile-device management (MDM) capabilities. The platform includes mobile app scanning and device security features to actively protect against malware, unauthorized data access and phishing while enforcing security policies.
In addition, the essential MAM feature allows corporate apps to be cataloged, pushed and deleted while providing data-wiping capabilities for lost or stolen devices, and secure, hosted VPN capability isolates users from network attacks like man-in-the-middle, redirects, poisoned Domain Name System (DNS), phishing and wireless eavesdropping.
According to this year’s HIMSS Leadership Survey, which collected the opinions of health care provider organizations’ IT professionals, securing information on mobile devices was the top security concern at their organizations.
Nineteen percent of respondents (down from 22 in 2012) had experienced a security breach within their organizations in the past year, and 22 percent (up from 16 percent in 2012) want to focus on security systems in 2013.