Encrypted Voice For EMS & First Responders Is Here

First responders to medical emergencies must act fast and communicate effortlessly with doctors and nursing staff. But while effective communication among key people in a medical facility is critical, media types, hackers and unnecessary 3^rd parties have been listening in and sometimes interrupting communications if the communication channels are not secure. Digital voice communications have opened a doorway that first responders and EMS teams need to close, but how?

Why would someone want to listen in and disrupt these critical communications you ask? Here is a book that might explain some of that, "TheRampant Growth of Cybercrime in Healthcare,". Around 6.2 billion $$’s worth of data breaches is tallied on a yearly basis.

Heightened Communication Efforts

One of the best ways to protect data transmitted over the airwaves is by using public safety radio encryption. The goal of securing communications in the healthcare industry is at the forefront in most urban & suburban municipalities. Several innovations have been introduced to help solve this growing problem.

FirstNet

Based on a set of standards for data encryption FirstNet aims to provide a nationwide broadband network dedicated to emergency medical responders. The effort supports federal to state entities and this network guarantees interoperability and security against any form of data breach.

The network is guided by the following principles:

•  It will be a public safety-grade network that meets the needs of first responders.
•  Public safety users will have a priority access to the network
•  The network will ensure maximum reliability, especially during natural disasters.
•  It will provide mission-critical data services as an auxiliary to the voice capabilities offered by land mobile radio networks.
•  It will keep incident commanders in control of the EMS deployment.
•  It will employ regularly-assessed layers of security controls (e.g. Voice and data encryption).

Digital radios

Analog radio technology poses several issues and should be upgraded to use more reliable radio over IP networks. Installing gateways for RoIP systems can help those with older hardware bridge the gap in technology. These RoIP gatways are not as expensive as building your own network and are very reliable. With the strategic location of radios in a digital radio system, there are many efficiencies of leveraging virtual private networks, encrypted cellular networks and digital radio over IP networks that have been secured for mission critical communications.

Radio Over IP Networks

The third applications such as a gateways for RoIP systems make the best use of the multicasting technique. The RoIP Gateway allows a number of transceivers to be interconnected over a LAN or WAN. Each gateway is linked to a common multicast group address. Once that is accomplished, secure RoIPencryption becomes possible with the right communication engineer to do the programming for your application. There will probably be a need for a central Red black dispatch command center to assist with dispatching and communication switching. It is much more cost effective to use existing networks that building out new secure networks. You will just need the right partner to implement your securecommunications over radios and cellular networks.

2:00 PM Share: