Tech & Innovation in Healthcare

Question: Healthcare providers in our practice often use their personal tablets, laptops, or smartphones for work purposes. We need to make sure these mobile devices are as secure as possible to protect our patient privacy and our practice’s network.

Is there a difference between “remote wiping” and “remote disabling”?

Vermont Subscriber

Answer: A simple way to remember the difference between “remote wiping” and “remote disabling” is thinking about clearing the table after dinner. If you wipe off the table, you’re essentially cleaning everything off the surface.

The same goes for technology. When you remotely wipe a device, you’re erasing all the data on the mobile device if the device is not in your hand. Several mobile devices have a remote wipe feature, so you can permanently delete the stored data if your device is lost or stolen. However, you must enable the feature in order to take advantage of this safety mechanism.

On the other hand, remote disabling allows you to lock the device or completely erase the stored data if the device is lost or stolen. The remote disable function is nice if you think the person temporarily lost the device and will recover it. You should also verify the lock feature doesn’t have a bypass capability when setting up the remote disable feature.