Acting fast under pressure is business as usual for many companies in the healthcare industry. But behind the scenes, hospitals, insurance providers, and other organizations are racing to meet a different kind of challenge: Complying with new federal security regulations set out in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Another month, another fad. That’s how IT security can often appear to the business manager. There’s always some ‘crisis of the day’, whether it’s a new malicious computer virus, security vulnerability in Windows or spate of internal data leakages. But through all of this, there is an inescapable trend that needs urgent attention from the board – the increasing threat of confidential data being removed from the network inside the organization through the use of removable media devices such
as USB flash drives, ‘plug and play’ hard disks, PDAs and MP3 players.