Is Your Digital Information Protected?
Think only high level government personnel are at risk of a cyber-attack? Think again. AMA researchers found that 83 percent of physicians have experienced a cyber-attack. Learn what you need to know to protect your practice and your patients. Below are some tips to help keep your digital information protected.
Evaluate Your Current Risk
There are several categories you should evaluate when it comes to protecting your digital information:
- Blocking attacks. Do you have a designated staff member to monitor attacks? How are attacks reported? What is the process for dealing with an attack? Do you have adequate budget for digital security?
- Do your security measures comply with HIPAA regulations?
- Analysis of risk. Counter risks with a multilayered security approach that can analyze multiple security breaches and respond to them dynamically.
Review Your Vendor and Customer Agreements
You should do this at least once a year, which is the recommended timeline for those in the health care industry that use cloud-based medical records with their servers.
Assign Personnel for Compliance Management
When you suffer a security breach, you can be fined up to $50,000 per record lost. Designate a security official within your practice to fill an InfoSec role who can implement HIPAA policies and procedures in case of a breach.
Train Your Employees to Prevent Breaches
Each employee who has access to patient information (this is probably everyone) should thoroughly understand HIPAA compliance laws and take steps to ensure they are followed. Not only can this help protect patient information, but also your employees’ information and that of other businesses you partner with. Third party organizations provide such trainings.
Build a Network of Security Policies
Consider each of the following areas of security
- Governance.
- Policy.
- Engineering & operations.
- Monitoring & reporting.
- Optimization.
How do you keep your digital information protected? Share in the comments below.