7 Tips To Strengthen Telehealth Security And Protect Patient Data

The innovative use of virtual care has transformed the field of medicine and provided unmatched convenience and availability. This digital leap has resulted in a huge, usually fragile, attack surface. 

The healthcare industry is now the first target of cybercriminals. Why? Since a PHI is retailing much higher on the dark web compared to the usual credit card information.

To medical practitioners, it is not merely some technical glitch; it is a ransomware attack or a critical telehealth data breach that reveals vulnerable patient history. 

Ensuring Telehealth data protection is no longer just an IT concern; it is a patient safety imperative. Whether you are a small medical practitioner or a large hospital network, protect your virtual infrastructure in order to keep the trust.

Why Telehealth Security Matters More Than Ever

Increasing Cyber Attacks on Remote Care

With the migration of secured hospital networks to distributed home offices, a ‘boundary-less’ environment has been formed, and this is what hackers adore. Hackers are on the frontlines implementing ransomware that is specially developed to encrypt patient information until a sum is paid. 

Clinical Financial and Compliance Risks

According to the provisions of the HITECH Act and HIPAA, negligence fines may amount to millions of dollars. A breach in telehealth data protection will result in class-action litigation, medical license loss, and reputational losses that cannot be recovered.

Why PHI is the Best Data for Attackers

PHI includes immutable data: social security numbers, medical history, and insurance information. This information enables criminals to engage in identity theft and insurance fraud over a long period, unlike a credit card, which can be canceled, and which is why it is the crown jewel of cybercrime.

1. HIPAA-Compliant Telehealth Platforms

Key features every platform must include

Video tools are not all the same. Common consumer applications, such as FaceTime or the standard Skype, do not have the auditing capabilities needed in healthcare. In order to help make your platform HIPAA-compliant, it needs to have strong administrative controls.

Audit, user authentication, encryption

A secure system should produce comprehensive audit logs that include who accessed a session, when, and the duration. It should also be in favor of high-level encryption standards and compel strict user authentication protocols to avoid illegal entry.

How to check the compliance of vendors 

Do not just believe them. Seek third-party attestations. A vendor in the truest meaning of the word must be SOC 2 Type II certified or HITRUST CSF certified. Most importantly, in case a vendor is unwilling to sign a BAA, then they are not in compliance.

2. Use End-to-End Encryption in All the Sessions

Why video calls are easy targets

In the absence of encryption, a video stream is actually a video cast that could be intercepted by anybody with the appropriate equipment on the same network. It makes it possible to attack with Man-in-the-Middle attacks, when hackers can overhear important conversations without the other users being aware of them.

Encrypting data in transit vs. at rest

Telehealth protocols that use end-to-end encryption guarantee that the data is encrypted on the sender side of the device and is decrypted only on the receiver side of the device. The decryption keys must not be available to any intermediary (including the telehealth provider).

Secure vs. unsecured telehealth workflows

Unsecured: The physician sends a regular link through email. The video is sent through a public server where it is stored temporarily and might have been watched by server administrators.

Secure: The physician implements a platform of AES-256-bit encryption. The packet data is scrambled and then is sent out of the laptop of the doctor and is scrambled until it reaches the phone of the patient.

3. Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

How MFA reduces unauthorized access

Credential harvesting is a typical attack in which hackers steal portal passwords. Telehealth can be mitigated with multi-factor authentication, which involves an additional verification step. A hacker may not be able to access the system without the second factor, even with the password.

Types of MFA for healthcare environments

NIST guidelines suggest that SMS-based MFA is not the worst, yet app-based authenticators such as Google Authenticator or biometrics scans (fingerprint/FaceID) are much superior and more difficult to spoof.

4. Strengthen Device & Network Security

Clinician Mobile Device Security

In most cases, lost or stolen devices are the cause of remote patient care security. Any PHI within or accessible by a device must be disk-encrypted. In case the laptop is left in a taxi, disk encryption will make the information inaccessible.

VPN recommendations and risks of Public Wi-Fi

Strictly, providers are not supposed to hold sessions over the Wi-Fi that is accessible to the general public, such as coffee shops, without a VPN. VPN gives some form of a private tunnel over the public internet, thereby protecting the data against local snooping.

Best practices of MDM (Mobile Device Management)

IT departments are expected to implement MDM solutions to implement policies like automatic screen lock, automatic system updates, and the capability to remotely wipe a lost device.

Related: EHR Security: A 2025 Playbook for HIPAA, HITECH & Cloud Compliance

5. Educate Workforce on Telehealth Security

Types of human-induced telehealth breaches

Social engineering cannot be prevented by technical means. A typical case of a telehealth breach begins with a highly-intentional employee clicking a malicious link in an email that appears to be a patient query.

Training topics to be included monthly

Privacy practices in telehealth should be strengthened on a regular basis. The methods to identify a patient and call them before making a call, how to identify phishing emails, and the necessity of never sharing login credentials should be trained.

Role-based training and simulated phishing

Conduct fake phishing campaigns to understand which employees will use deceptive malicious links. Don’t correct them, but take these opportunities to create a human firewall.

6. Conduct Routine Security Audits and Risk Assessments

What must be audited in a telehealth setup?

In order to ensure that the breach of telehealth data is prevented successfully, you should review access logs, firewall settings, and user permission levels on a regular basis. Do old employees still have access to it? An audit will reveal this.

Penetration testing + vulnerability scanning

Periodically scan your network to determine known weaknesses. Also, employ white hat hackers to conduct penetration tests on your telehealth platform risk mitigation approach to find the weak areas before the malevolent parties do.

Comparison of the annual and quarterly assessment roadmap

• Quarterly: Check user access privileges and apply software patches.
• Annually: Have an entire third-party HIPAA risk testing and penetration test.

7. Implement Zero-Trust Architecture of Remote Care

What Zero-Trust means for telehealth

Zero-Trust presupposes that a threat might already be within the network. Thus, no user or device is default-trusted even when it has access to the office network.

Role-based access control

Introduce stringent Role-Based Access Controls. The access of clinical notes to a billing specialist and the access of an administrative setting to a nurse should be restricted.

Telehealth workflow: Least-privilege access example

A Zero-Trust model will allow a temporary nurse to gain access to the patient files required of them during the shift, and this access will be automatically removed when their shift is completed.

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The Vozo Customized EHR solution benefits your healthcare practice by:

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