The Long-Term Damage of a Healthcare Data Breach
A data breach can be one of the most costly and damaging events for any healthcare agency. While its name usually conjures images of stolen files and network downtime, a single breach can have far more extensive, long-term effects. These include risks to patient health when charts are disabled, fines for HIPAA noncompliance, and a […]
Ransomware Evolves into RansomOps, and IT Burnout Is Growing
Healthcare organizations often fall prey to ransomware when they don’t anticipate becoming targets, or they fail to test the limits of their cyber defense. But now that these attacks are becoming more sophisticated, it’s vital that your team assess weaknesses in your IT’s infrastructure before bad actors exploit them. Here’s the latest on ransomware trends […]
Don’t Sacrifice Mobile Device Security for the Sake of Efficiency
Unfortunately, mobile devices are a big risk factor that some healthcare agencies actively ignore. HealthITSecurity reported back in 2020 that 37 percent of surveyed organizations indicated that they sacrificed mobile security for the sake of efficiency. Here’s why, and what yours can do to avoid that temptation. Healthcare Apps and the Cloud Mobile devices are […]
How to Identify Network Vulnerabilities: Pen Testing, Red vs. Blue, and Purple Teaming
The best way to avoid a data breach is to identify network vulnerabilities before your attackers do. This is particularly relevant to the healthcare sector, as it typically lacks some of the robust cybersecurity tools that other industries have come to rely on. If your team is looking for ways to improve its own data […]
What Data Backup Strategies Work Best for Healthcare?
Due to the increase in ransomware attacks across the healthcare sector, organizations must take the time now to develop and execute stronger data management strategies. That includes the consistent backup of all patient and operational files so that this information is still available internally in the event of an attack. The reason for this is […]
Password Best Practices for Healthcare Organizations
Passwords have become such a ubiquitous component in healthcare that it may not seem relevant to include them in any updates to your cyber defense. Yet the opposite is the case, especially in light of studies that show how easy passwords are to misuse: lacking in strength against brute force attacks, being shared too readily […]
Why All Businesses Should Care About Cybersecurity Changes to CMMC
President Joe Biden issued an Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity on May 12, 2021, which has since led to a review of the Department of Defense’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program (CMMC). Developed back in 2019, CMMC’s goal has been two-pronged: protect government data, and evaluate the cyber compliance of government contractors. But […]
400+ CPT Code Changes You’ll Need for 2022
If you want to be ahead of the curve, the AMA recently released their updates to the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code set for next year. According to Fierce Healthcare, they include 249 new codes, 63 deletions, and 93 revisions, or just over 400 changes in all. And, similar to the changes we saw for this year, 2022’s […]
Cybersecurity and Interoperability: You Can’t Have One Without the Other
The Pandemic’s Perfect Storm During a national emergency, there will always be those who seek to turn the chaos to their own profitable ends— and the coronavirus pandemic has been no exception. 2020 was the fifth straight year in which reports of hacking incidents increased, with the 2020 number 42% higher than 2019. Hacking incidents […]
A Guide to Patient Data Standardization
In the world of health care, data standards are the key to increasing interoperability— a term you’ve probably heard before, which refers to the ability of health-related technology to exchange medical data seamlessly across distances and systems. Data standards existed before COVID-19, but the pandemic has only brought to light the pressing need for wider […]
