SAN DIEGO, CA, Nov. 3, 2009 (Marketwire) --

SAN DIEGO, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/03/09 -- For Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY), the largest not-for-profit home healthcare organization in the United States, safeguarding confidential patient data while allowing its thousands of in-home nurses who use wireless laptops to use the Internet is essential to business. Recognizing the growing business value of Web 2.0 sites that allow user-generated content as communication tools, VNSNY turned to Websense, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBSN) for an integrated content-based security solution.

With 13,300 employees and more than 2,700 nurses, VNSNY cares for more than 30,000 patients daily throughout New York City and Westchester and Nassau counties. In 2008, VNSNY clinicians made close to 2.5 million home visits.

Using cutting-edge technology is a priority for VNSNY and each nurse carries a laptop to better communicate in the field, take notes during visits and access internal databases, health and medication records, and insurance information. VNSNY relies on the Websense® Web Security Gateway integrated with the enterprise data loss prevention solution Websense Data Security Suite, to protect essential patient information from Web-based threats and from accidental or malicious data loss.

"With thousands of nurses in the field at any given time with wireless Internet-enabled laptops, having secure access to patient data over the Web is a critical part of our organization and a reason why we are so successful," said Larry Whiteside, chief information security officer, VNSNY. "We rely on the Websense V10000 secure Web gateway appliance to enable our nurses to quickly get the information they need safely and securely. With the real-time scanning and the ability to create flexible policies around Internet use, I don't worry about our field nurses encountering a Web site that has been compromised with data-stealing malicious code or accidentally sending confidential patient data to the wrong place."

Recently, the VNSNY marketing department began exploring Facebook as a mechanism to engage a wider audience of individuals who have been a patient of, or are interested in the services provided by the VNSNY. The organization launched a presence on Facebook with a fan page that enables the social networking site visitors to receive information on events and communicate with other members of the fan page.

"Unmanaged use of Web 2.0 technology is risky, introducing potential threats and data loss, but we recognize that things like Facebook and Twitter are being used more and more by organizations like ours to communicate with patients and employees as well as recruit new employees," added Whiteside.