VDI and desktop virtualization are increasingly being considered as an important tool as data breaches continue to be discovered in the healthcare industry.

Everyone has heard about the breach involving Anthem, Inc., the second biggest health insurer in the U.S. It affects some 80 million customers and employees and is said to be the largest hack to a healthcare entity ever. Either you personally are affected or you know someone who is.

But Anthem isn't alone. Just in the past year, there are many other healthcare organizations reporting sizable breaches. They include Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, Texas Health and Human Services, and Community Health Systems, to name a few.

Organizations of All Sizes Are Vulnerable

The reality is that healthcare providers of all sizes are vulnerable. Hospitals are especially targeted and in need of strong security.

I found a recent news item especially interesting in this context. According to a TransUnion Healthcare report, more than half of recent hospital patients are willing to switch healthcare providers if their current provider undergoes a data breach. And the younger you are (and likely more savvy about computers and the internet), the more likely you are to ditch your provider for poor performance.

The Damage to Organizations Is Immediate -- and Expensive 

Data breaches are painful for everyone. Looking at the healthcare provider, if the organization is large enough, class-action lawsuits may be filed in the first 24 hours after public notification. But beyond the courtroom, there is also the inevitable damage to reputation and brand, and the lost productivity of implementing forensics, remediation and regulatory compliance (HIPAA Privacy and HIPAA Security rules). In short, this an expensive nightmare that can and should be avoided. 

IT administrators must consider all the places in the network where Protected Health Information (PHI) and electronic PHI (ePHI) are gathered and stored. Strategies for protecting the datacenter can be implemented at the server but the challenge remains about keeping ahead of threats at the desktop level.

Zero Clients Help Solve the Data Breach Puzzle

One of the most promising approaches involves protecting sensitive information with zero clients at the end point. Healthcare providers are constantly accessing sensitive patient records with very personal information.  Zero clients allow you to enable a remote or mobile worker and still comply with HIPAA, PHI and ePHI by restricting the ability to download and store data locally.  Nothing stored, nothing lost.

Zero Client Laptop at Cloud Expo Europe

There is growing momentum for moving beyond old-style thin clients to implement the latest generation zero clients as a part of the evolution towards Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). A good example is the UK availability of Cirrus LT mobile PCoIP zero client laptop, announced earlier this week. Cirrus LT is optimized for the UK market and is being showcased this week at the Cloud Expo Europe held in London - the biggest and best attended cloud event in the world.

Research on VDI, thin clients and desktop virtualization inevitably leads to articles on how to deal with latency issues and the end user experience. It only makes sense that pushing data on round trips between client and cloud servers could create some degradation in performance, especially involving bandwidth-hungy applications. Concerns about performance have concerned IT administrators and end users considering significant investments in desktop virtualizaiton products. And an Internet search of these issues uncovers thousands of articles and papers suggesting workarounds.

In doing market research I have come across a report on virtualization from a top tier industry analyst group. In order to project market trends, the report analyst lumped together thin clients and zero clients used in desktop virtualization. This would be like an auto report lumping together Civic sedans and CR-Z sport hybrids. Both are compact Hondas and both are fuel efficient, but users are probably looking for totally different driving experiences in these vehicles. So I believe the analyst in writing that particular research report on the virtualization market was not being as precise with his subscribers as he needed to be.

What is VDI?

The interest in virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is growing each year, as IT managers continually look for ways to decrease IT administrative complexity and lower hardware costs. While momentum for VDI grows, many IT administrators are just beginning to seriously consider evaluations and implementation.