Using Deep Freeze To Simplify Compliance for Shared Workstations in Health Care and Education

Compliance is important for organizations in just about every industry. But, in the public sector, compliance takes on added significance. And when an organization deals with personal and sensitive data such as health records or information about children, compliance becomes absolutely paramount.

But that doesn’t mean organizations in these sectors can’t benefit from the flexible and cost-saving work practices that businesses in other fields enjoy. They just need the right mindset and the right tools.

The Value of Shared Workstations

Organizations utilize shared workstations for a variety of reasons. Some benefits for educational organizations include:

• Cost-effectiveness and scalability: Shared computing enables more students to access technology without the high cost of purchasing and maintaining individual computers for every user. This approach is highly scalable and reduces the financial burden on schools.
• Enhanced collaboration: Shared desks and computing environments promote active learning and peer-to-peer collaboration. Shared workstations can also make lessons more dynamic and engaging. 
• Centralized resources: Shared platforms provide students and teachers with access to a single source of documents, notes and educational materials. This helps streamline administrative tasks and ensures everyone is working with the most up-to-date information.

And for health care organizations, using shared workstations can provide:

• Improved efficiency and mobility: Shared workstations on wheels allow doctors and nurses to access and update electronic health records and other patient information at the point of care, such as a patient’s bedside. This reduces delays, enabling staff to be more productive.
• Cost reduction and flexibility: For solo practitioners or smaller clinics, shared medical office spaces or “medical coworking” provide a cost-effective solution. Practitioners can rent fully equipped, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-compliant rooms, avoiding the high overhead costs of a traditional private practice. This model offers the flexibility to scale as their practices grow.
• Data accuracy and patient safety: Accessing and updating patient data in real-time at the bedside reduces the risk of miscommunication, transcription errors and delays in care. This ensures all members of the care team are working with accurate and current information, which improves patient safety and outcomes.

Compliance Challenges

For all their benefits, shared workstations throw up some compliance issues. 

Compliance in Education

The primary compliance challenge in education is adhering to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). This federal law protects the privacy of student education records and personally identifiable information. In shared computing environments, a major risk is unauthorized access to student data. Without proper access controls, a student or teacher using a shared workstation could inadvertently view or alter another student’s information, leading to a FERPA violation. 

It’s essential for schools to employ security measures, such as privacy filters on screens, and to position workstations in a way that prevents “shoulder surfing” or casual viewing of sensitive information. Without these precautions, schools risk breaches of student privacy and potential penalties for non-compliance.

Compliance in Health Care

HIPAA compliance colors everything a health care organization does. When using shared workstations or mobile carts, the risk of a breach is high due to the potential for unauthorized access, data exposure and insecure data transmission. To mitigate these risks, health care providers must implement stringent administrative, physical and technical safeguards. 

For administrative safeguards, policies must be in place to specify proper workstation use and to train staff on secure data handling. Physical safeguards include securing workstations to restrict access and using screen privacy filters. Most importantly, technical safeguards are critical, requiring unique user IDs for every staff member, strong password policies and automatic log-off or screen lock after a period of inactivity. It’s important to log and audit all activity on shared workstations to ensure accountability, and to encrypt all sensitive data at rest and in transit to prevent unauthorized access, even if a device is lost or stolen. Failure to implement these measures can result in severe financial penalties, legal action and a loss of patient trust.

How Deep Freeze Solves Compliance Problems

At Faronics, we developed Deep Freeze with compliance issues in mind. Deep Freeze offers a number of security features organizations can use to keep data on their workstations safe. But the most powerful feature of Deep Freeze — Reboot-to-Restore — is a solution that’s elegant in its simplicity.

Here’s what Reboot-to-Restore does: It automatically wipes out unauthorized changes, ensuring policy enforcement. Administrators can choose what information should remain changeable and store this on the “Thawed” drive. But all the important applications and sensitive data? That goes on the Frozen drive.

When you restart a workstation, everything in the Frozen drive resets to its pristine state. Did a child mess around during computer time and change something they shouldn’t have? Did a staff member fall for a phishing scam? Did a cybercriminal breach the system’s firewalls? 

It doesn’t matter. Just turn it off and on again. If you complied with laws and regulations before, you still will now. 

Want to learn more? Please reach out to our experts today.