Security

Security: physical and environmental security in CIS

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Physical and Environmental Security 3 Importance & Benefits 4 References

Introduction

In clinical information system (CIS), important information contained. There are a lot of threats that violate the security of the clinical data and personal information. One of our main roles in a CIS organization is to protect the data and information from those threats .We will discover some main threats that may violate the security. Also we are going to present some advices to protect the data from hacking.

Any successful organization has a lot of difficulties and obstacles that hinder its progress. The aim of these articles to identify some of these obstacles and some proposed methods of protection of such threats.

A threat is any agency that has undesirable effects to CIS security such as system failure and harm.

In this article we will discuss some factors that should be considered to protect CISs and the organization itself from some environmental threats. We also concentrate on illustrating the concept of physical and environmental security, the benefits of implementation of some physical security controls and the importance of applying some protection factors in any health organization dealing with computer systems.

Physical and Environmental Security

We can define physical and environmental security as the security measures that taken in the organization to protect computer systems and employees from some intended or unintended threats. Then we should take into consideration these measures to

1. Protect the physical facility including building, computers and network component from threats such as fire, proof leaks and unauthorized access.
2. Protect from natural threats such as earthquakes and flooding or either man-made threats as burglary, interception of messaging, electromagnetic interruption and damaging nearby facility such as chemical spoil.
3. Conserve the supporting facilities such as heating and air conditioning, electric power and telecommunication.

Importance & Benefits

Security measures aid in protection against many threats in health organization. It provides protection of CISs from:

• Disconnection with other computer services.
• Physical damage: such as hardware and network components destruction.
• Data destroy.
• Unauthorized disclosure of information.
• Security hacking.
• Loss of control over system integrity: If the intruder gains access to Central Processing Unit (CPU), logical access control could be escaped. Then access to clinical and personal data.
• Physical theft: hardware could be stolen.

Some examples of physical and environmental security controls:

• Physical access controls,
• Fire safety,
• Supporting utilities,
• Plumbing leaks,
• Interception of data, and
• Mobile and portable systems.

References

1. S.K.PARMAR, Cst N.Cowichan Duncan RCMP Det 060 Canada Ave., Duncan, BC”INFORMATION RESOURCE GUIDE Computer, Internet and Network Systems Security”, 2000.

http://www.hamptonu.edu/events/ia_symposium/presentations_09/DanielRyan.pdf

Submitted by (Adham Emam)