A secured app environment on a phone is plenty well secure for medical data. It is preferred strongly over a web based solution. Having a personal device running a company profile of security compliance monitoring and conditional access is as good as a company device provided by the hospital. They would do literally the same thing.
I think you’re making a lot of assumptions on how the setup is. It could be fine IF they configured everything correctly and are enforcing things on the work profile. Or, it could be terrible IF they just said “install this app, that’s it”.
Having a company provided device with poor guardrails would at least mean it’s not a device that the staff would do their personal stuff on, installing random apps. Having a company provided device with strong guardrails and fully locked down for this purpose would avoid most of the risk of an undiscovered vulnerability being abused. However well the work profile stuff is now separated in mobile OSs today, there can always be day 0s, and people will install any random apps on their phones or fall for plain social engineering.
Maybe technically right now they’re comparable for security, but their risk profile is different I think.
Imagine just targeting this place for phishing and creating a similar looking app with the same name, then sending fake communication to staff to say there is a new version and install it. They can just install it on their personal profile even if the work one doesn’t allow it and start putting data in it. In the case of a locked down work device they could just not install it. Also, there’s no reason for these devices to leave the grounds whereas personal devices will need to go out into the wild.
Maybe if you consider it a personal device if the staff has to relinquish all control of their entire personal device to the work provided security controls they can achieve a similar risk profile, but at that point it’s just a work device the staff had to pay for, not their personal device.
My local hospital apparently requires their employees to use a “secure” app on their personal phone to transmit data on the patients.
Seems like irresponsible handling of PHI (by the administration, not the staff) to me.
Work in IT, alongside info security. Nah.
A secured app environment on a phone is plenty well secure for medical data. It is preferred strongly over a web based solution. Having a personal device running a company profile of security compliance monitoring and conditional access is as good as a company device provided by the hospital. They would do literally the same thing.
I think you’re making a lot of assumptions on how the setup is. It could be fine IF they configured everything correctly and are enforcing things on the work profile. Or, it could be terrible IF they just said “install this app, that’s it”.
Having a company provided device with poor guardrails would at least mean it’s not a device that the staff would do their personal stuff on, installing random apps. Having a company provided device with strong guardrails and fully locked down for this purpose would avoid most of the risk of an undiscovered vulnerability being abused. However well the work profile stuff is now separated in mobile OSs today, there can always be day 0s, and people will install any random apps on their phones or fall for plain social engineering.
Maybe technically right now they’re comparable for security, but their risk profile is different I think.
Imagine just targeting this place for phishing and creating a similar looking app with the same name, then sending fake communication to staff to say there is a new version and install it. They can just install it on their personal profile even if the work one doesn’t allow it and start putting data in it. In the case of a locked down work device they could just not install it. Also, there’s no reason for these devices to leave the grounds whereas personal devices will need to go out into the wild.
Maybe if you consider it a personal device if the staff has to relinquish all control of their entire personal device to the work provided security controls they can achieve a similar risk profile, but at that point it’s just a work device the staff had to pay for, not their personal device.