While healthcare providers are sick of hearing about breaches, breaches continue to run rampant.
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Breaches are still ongoing because healthcare information continues to be highly valuable on the black market.
Cybersecurity continues to be an issue for healthcare providers, as do employee issues resulting in breaches of protected health information (PHI).
How do employees contribute to the continuing breaches?
Employees continue to leave unencrypted laptops and devices in their cars, which can be easily stolen.
Employees also continue to click on phishing emails, letting hackers have access to protected health information.
Employee issues can be somewhat prevented with adequate training regarding the physical security of devices and appropriate training regarding phishing and ransomware.
Hackers and cybercriminals continue to hit big targets with ransomware, but have also begun to attack smaller physician offices.
To prevent ransomware attacks, healthcare organizations should make sure that they have updated antivirus software and firewalls in place.
There should be multiple backups, with some stored offsite. Practices should make sure to know how quickly they can be up and running after an attack.
When Allscripts was attacked earlier this year, many users were unable to access patient information for a period of time.
We help our clients test their breach readiness plans and train their employees to mitigate the potential ramifications of a breach.
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