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See how keeping patches and security measures up-to-date will protect your patient data, and your organization’s future.
Healthcare poses a unique challenge for cybersecurity professionals, with some of the largest threats in recent history coming from ransomware attacks. With billions of dollars lost each year in data breaches, healthcare organizations have a lot to lose if personal data is breached.
Hospitals, in particular, are vulnerable (as proven by the May 2017 global ransomware attack tied to a National Security Agency leaked exploit). The hospitals that hadn’t installed a critical Microsoft patch were susceptible to the hack. This could have been prevented by ensuring all maintenance tasks were up-to-date.
As the IoT (Internet of Things) expands into the healthcare realm, security becomes an even bigger challenge for healthcare IT administrators. The cyber threat landscape continues to evolve, making it even more difficult to predict where attacks will come from in the future.
The widespread use of healthcare-related devices such as heart monitors, mobile phones, and other mobile-ready devices provides a “playground” for individuals looking to hack corporate healthcare networks. The fast-paced adoption of digital health records continues to provide challenges to IT leaders due to the lack of interoperability between systems.
Fortunately, IT managed services firms like Alvarez Technology Group offer a way for understaffed hospitals, healthcare providers and networks to leverage additional support to ensure that the “guardrails” remain strong, and threats are minimized.
Without extensive cybersecurity training, most employees won’t understand the potential severity of their actions. IT professionals should constantly be on the lookout for opportunities to preach IT hygiene with users, including the practice of limiting orphaned or untracked devices.
There are plenty of headlines around cyber security threats from malware and hacking. And phishing is on the rise again as employees are targeted, being the weakest link in the security chain.
New staff members who aren’t familiar with security requirements, both physical and digital, may not be taking the necessary steps to ensure workstations are fully secured before stepping away. Passwords may be less-secure than administrators would like, and the fast-paced environment may lead to skipped steps.
Much of the work to educate employees about cybersecurity is left to business-level leaders who may not understand the full impact of the requirements themselves. This is why it’s imperative that IT security training is done by experts like those at Alvarez Technology Group.
A proper defense involves:
The recent Equifax hack clearly demonstrates the importance of quickly rolling out security fixes, and ensuring that all patches are up-to-date. If the Equifax team had simply applied a security patch, it’s unlikely that the hack would have been successful–saving the company millions of dollars in remediation, notifications and lost business.
Let the security professionals at Alvarez Technology Group complete a full review of your potential vulnerabilities and create a plan for remediation. We’ll bring the security practices in your organization to a high level of preparedness. Our ongoing support will assist your organization to maintain critical patches and quickly discover any potential breaches so you can take immediate action.
Contact Alvarez Technology Group today at (831) 753 -7677 or info@alvareztg.com to learn more.
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