CDA Oasis Webinar: Encryption in the Dental Office: What you need to know
On September 23rd, Anne Genge and Dr. John O’Keefe hosted a live webinar on encryption in the dental office.
Download the PPT used in the webinar (PDF)
Highlights
Anne Genge returns to Oasis Discussions in this webinar to speak to dental practitioners and team members about encryption. Encryption is the gold or legal standard for securing data wherever it “lives” and during data transmission. Dental offices are vulnerable to attacks and, at times, a lot of personal information is stored in the electronic health record sometimes even credit card information.
Encryption takes readable data, scrambles it and unlocks the data once a password/key is applied to the file. This helps prevent unauthorized parties to read information if devices or laptops etc. are lost or stolen. PHI or personal health information which relates to a person’s physical or mental health, insurance dealings, diagnostics and treatment must be encrypted. The loss or theft of this information can have long-lasting implications on a person’s relationships, insurability and employability. Because of the threat of this information being divulged, at times, patients may not share critical health information with their health care providers.
Servers, workstations, laptops and mobile devices, portable and back-up drives must be encrypted. “Data at rest” is not actively moving from a device to device or network to network. “Data in motion” is data being transmitted via email through a portal or private network. This includes texts, SMS but, there are now secure apps which allow texting between providers. Free software (eg. Bitlocker) is available to encrypt data otherwise, software or subscription services can be purchased.
Play back the webinar video
Resources