Mediaboss Marketing

By Robert Mann

Westminster Canterbury Richmond (WCR) is a high-end continuing-care retirement community in Richmond, Va., designed for older adults who are able-bodied, active and involved. It is home to about 900 residents, and 750 employees work there.

The community has been growing, and as it expanded, WCRs commitment to securing its customer information became paramount. For IT, that meant taking a number of steps to protect not only the information of its residentswhich includes financial data and health care recordsbut also the companys proprietary information, for competitive reasons.

For an organization such as WCR, whose residents put high value on privacy, a leak of internal data, or worse, of resident information, could cause irreparable harm to its brand and image. Beyond that, the federal Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandates the protection of individuals identifiable health information. No one at WCR wanted to take the risk that any of our information would end up in the public domain.

The IT department took a number of steps to protect WCRs data. These included encrypting all office laptops with PGP Whole Disk Encryption (now Symantec); using our Fortinet FortiGate Firewall to prevent data leaks; protecting Social Security, credit card and patient numbers; and encrypting email with Fortinet FortiMail Appliance.

We started at the desktops and extended from there, making data protection an organizationwide initiative. As part of that effort, we also banned the use of flash drives, which we believe pose too great a security risk.

However, our staff needed to use portable drives, whether to share financial information with investors or for a marketing presentation. So we looked for alternatives.

We evaluated a number of encrypted flash drive options. Each had something that made us steer clear of it. Some were susceptible to key logger software; others required IT to update their software at regular intervals. Thats when we turned to the LOK-IT Secure Flash Drive. The encrypted flash drive has a FIPS 140-2 Level 3 validation, or government-level security, which means that it meets one of the highest standards set by the federal government for encrypting and securing data.

Some drives use encryption that must access software on a computer, but encryption on LOK-IT is performed on an internal USB controller. To gain access to the drive and the data within it, users punch a pin code into a 10-key PIN-Pad, much like an ATM.

Excerpt from:
Protecting Customerand CompanyData - Security - News & Reviews - Baseline.com