Oct 26
2021
6 Ways To Reduce The Risk of Healthcare Data Breach
The healthcare industry deals with a significant amount of sensitive information every day, thus making healthcare organizations a prime target for cyberattacks. If stolen by cybercriminals, sensitive healthcare data could be used for identity theft, extortion, and other illegal activities. These confidential data may include patient names, dates of birth, addresses, and social security numbers.
Cases of data breaches continue to put high-sensitive patient information at risk. Moreover, cyberattacks resulted in at least one data breach in 91% of healthcare organizations six years ago. And, just last year, more than 50% of all healthcare vendors exposed Protected Health Information (PHI) due to data breaches.
To protect healthcare data, organizations should take a proactive approach. This would mean implementing healthcare security practices not limited to the list below.
- Updating Or Replacing Outdated Infrastructure or Hardware
They say the only permanent thing in this world is change. Technology isn’t an exception. One of the various ways that healthcare organizations could reduce the risk of data breaches is to update their IT infrastructure. They have to ensure the latest security patches are available and installed.
However, the need to update IT infrastructure can be costly. Installing it requires distinct knowledge from professionals. Therefore, healthcare organizations must ensure they have the budget and the right people on board to carry out the process. They may do so by working with Dallas managed services provider (MSP) or the nearest IT company that will take care of all the required updates.
- Backing Up Data
A ransomware cyberattack uses malware to limit or prevent users from accessing a system. Users could only regain access after a ransom is paid. It tells us one thing – data breaches can also compromise data availability and integrity.
This is why cybersecurity experts highly recommend frequent offsite data backups. It’s the practice of protecting data by copying it from a primary to a secondary location. Most established IT companies provide this for their clients as part of their service.