Ransomware Protection 101: Protecting a Medical Practice

Whether you’re operating a small business or a medical practice, it is a good idea to look into ransomware protection. It’s like insurance for your network and security. Without it, your practice is at risk for phishing scams, security breaches, and ransomware attacks that can cost in money, downtime, and HIPAA fines. Hiring an IT consulting firm to handle the day-to-day monitoring, updating, and upgrading means you have more time to focus on patient care.

Ransomware Protection 101 

What was once thought to be a big expense for smaller practices, has not become a necessity. No longer do hackers focus on breaching the data of large hospitals and practices; they don’t care whose information they illegally obtain. That’s why the team at TekConcierge is here to educate and provide ransomware protection for your practice.

1. Change passwords frequently. This process can be automated to remind employees to change their passwords every month or quarter. Password security can be coded so they cannot just add a number or punctuation to the last one to update. That’s not security; the password needs to be a unique combination of letters, numbers, and punctuation.
2. Update antivirus protection. Hackers are finding more ways to breach more data. As a result, antivirus software is updated frequently by vendors. Make sure you’re updating at your practice as well.
3. Educate employees. While they may tire of the education about phishing scams and clicking links, it is important to keep employees reminded of their role in protecting the practice. One breach can mean protected patient information is shared and that can spell disaster for the practice in terms of reputation management and HIPAA violations.
4. Regularly backup data. Should data be breached or held for ransom, data can be restored from backups, if the backups exist. Without these files, you may have to pay ransom to get data back or will have to incur the expense of rebuilding databases. We offer data backup as part of our ransomware protection to all our clients so you never have to worry.
5. Use VPN. When working away from the office, it is a good idea to use VPN. Connecting to public or outside Wi-Fi can be a risk to data security. When using a VPN server, the data stays private. No one can access the data so it is more secure.

Ransomware protection is no longer optional. It is essential to running a medical practice, especially because you’re required to be HIPAA compliant. One breach could cost you your practice and we would not want that to happen. Contact TekConcierge today for a consultation!