Secure Texting Best Practices: Communicate Your Policies

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5 Best Practices for Successful Secure

Texting

#3: Communicate Your Policies

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Once you have established the goals and gotten the

organization on board with the plans…

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… it is important to

communicate the policies

for secure texting.

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Every organization is different, but your secure texting policy

should cover things like…

Secure Texting Policies

All messaging needs to be secure. Text messages, images, videos, and files need to be transmitted over a

secure platform.

No SMS texting for organizational use.

Secure Texting Policies

Clarify the types of messages that are allowed and not allowed over the

secure platform. For example, medical orders can be texted, but

must be verified verbally as well.

Secure Texting Policies

All messages on the secure platform are the property of the organization and as such can be accessed, read, deleted or otherwise used by the

organization.

Secure Texting Policies

Define your BYOD policy. Does your organization allows the use of personal

devices (“bring your own device” or BYOD) or will it supply devices to those who need it?

Secure Texting Policies

If BYOD is allowed, what devices are approved or excluded?

Is any operating system or additional security downloads required?

Secure Texting Policies

When and how to report a lost or stolen device so that remote lock &

wipe can be activated.

Secure Texting Policies

Describe details around message expiration and retention.

Determine how long messages will be retained on devices and in the archive, and how to retrieve an

older message if needed.

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Why are these types of policies important?

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Smartphones are ubiquitous in healthcare and are used to

share patient information.

A study conducted by the Health Research Institute has revealed that more than 80% of

healthcare workers now use portable mobile devices to communicate information

to colleagues about their patients or to access stored patient health information.

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Smartphones used inappropriately can lead to

security breaches.

The Center for Democracy and Technology showed that 66 % of potential patient data

security breaches over the past two years were attributable to portable mobile

devices being either stolen or lost.

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Security risks can be greatly diminished.

Establishing these secure texting policies helps to diminish the risk of patient health information

being compromised during the sending or receiving of sensitive data, or while it is stored on

a mobile device.

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Roll out your secure texting initiative today.

Learn more at

www.qliqsoft.com