Bayshore Home Health Encrypts Laptop Disks With WinMagic

Bayshore Home Health, Canadian provider of home and community health care services, is installing WinMagic, Inc.’s SecureDoc full-disk encryption software on all laptops and tablets used by the company, including those utilized by clinical managers and nurses.

“Clinical managers are critical to the patient care process as they are the first to arrive at a patient’s home,” says Daniel Gallagher, Manager, Infrastructure & Support for Bayshore Home Health. “Clinical managers assess the services patients require and we knew that providing them with technology at the point-of-care would improve efficiency and expedite patient care. We also knew that before we could only allow them to utilize tablets laptops in the field we had to be absolutely certain all data is secure. We looked at other encryption technologies, but none could meet all our criteria. Only WinMagic seamlessly integrated with our laptops and tablets to provide the combination of ease of use, ease of management, high-level security and local support we required.”

Bayshore’s clinical managers’ laptops will have WinMagic’s SecureDoc full-disk encryption installed when employees receive them. They will also be issued a cellular AirCard which, when combined with mobile VPN software, will provide simple, anytime, anywhere secure VPN tunnel access to central information resources. The ability to enter and access data immediately will enhance productivity by eliminating the need for field staff to return to branch offices – significantly expediting the delivery of patient care.

“SecureDoc installs in the background which means Bayshore’s IT department can set up the laptops while they are working on other projects,” explains Gallagher. “As the full-disk encryption software does not impact laptop performance users are not inconvenienced in any way. This is vitally important as the whole point of this project is to improve efficiency and patient care. It makes sense to treat patients at home because not only do people feel more comfortable in familiar surroundings, but it also saves on expensive hospital care.”

“It’s great to think that SecureDoc is enabling Bayshore Home Health to improve patient care,” says Thi Nguyen-Huu, CEO of WinMagic, Inc. “People tend to think of encryption as nothing more than data protection, but once information is secure organizations are free to focus on their core business,” Nguyen-Huu continued. “Health care providers like Bayshore Home Health have selected SecureDoc because it meets strict data security requirements without distracting busy medical staff – enabling them to concentrate on providing the best possible medical care.”

Compatible with Microsoft Windows, Mac and Linux platforms, SecureDoc protects all data stored on servers, desktops, laptops and removable media, such as USB thumb drives and CD/DVDs. SecureDoc supports and manages hardware-encrypted disk drives such as the Seagate Momentus FDE and BlackArmor drives, as well as the upcoming TCG ‘Opal’ specification drives from leading drive manufacturers. This provides the flexibility to deploy any combination of hardware and software-based encryption – or transition between the two – with full transparency for users and a consistent management interface for administrators.

SecureDoc’s enterprise-class ‘always-on’ full-disk encryption simplifies the deployment of any combination of sector-based full-disk encryption, file-and-folder encryption, container encryption and self-extractor encryption. This not only makes it easy for organizations to customize data protection to meet specific security protocols, but also ‘future-proofs’ their investment in encryption. And, in the event that a password is forgotten, or if the user is not available, centralized escrow and management of encryption keys ensure critical data can still be accessed.