Safeguarding patient data against ransomware threats is essential for every Endodontic Practice, not just for data protection but also to minimize financial and legal liabilities. Implementing deliberate measures to shield your practice from ransomware is non-negotiable in today’s digital landscape, but it can feel overwhelming to business practice owners struggling for the time to keep up.
Ransomware in it’s simplest form kidnaps your physical data and encrypts it so you lose immediate access to it, until you pay the hackers a considerable fee. The going rate of a patient record is $300+ ¹ just to give you an idea.
Reportable breaches can cost your practice lost revenue due to inaccessibility to patient data, financial liabilities, and damage to your reputation when required to inform patients and associated providers of your breach. Depending on the severity of the breach, restoration of data could take days or even weeks to resolve.
Let’s explore straightforward yet effective steps that are integral to ensuring intentional protection of your patient data, reducing potential risks and liabilities for your Endodontic practice.
Step 1: Assess Your Security Measures
For practices reliant on server-based practice management software, safeguarding locally stored ePHI and fortifying against ransomware attacks demands meticulous attention.
Initial steps involve:
- Assessing your current security protocols to pinpoint vulnerabilities.
- Prioritizing stringent and consistent data backups, ensuring secure storage and frequent redundancy tests.
- Implementing robust cybersecurity measures such as firewalls, antivirus software, and intrusion detection systems, while simultaneously maintaining vigilance with software updates and patches.
Strengthening security protocols associated with regular backups, security updates, and cybersecurity tools becomes paramount in fortifying server-based software against potential ransomware threats.
And if you’re wondering, “Is this going to cost me a small fortune?”, the answer is “Yeah, it can!”. Security measures to protect locally stored patient data from ransomware attacks requires constant attention and adaptation in your approach. And if you’re not personally ensuring it gets done, you’re likely paying a full-time IT team to do it for you.
Step 2: Create Ongoing Policies, Protocols and Audit Logs
Ensuring the robustness of your practice’s security isn’t just a one-time effort; it’s an ongoing commitment to understand, evaluate, and consistently enhance your security measures.
Initial steps involve:
- Establishing a comprehensive checklist and protocols.
- Running routine audits to identify security weaknesses and potential improvements.
- Facilitating enhanced security measures, usually by means of a IT Support Team if you are working on a server-based software.
Employing meticulous checklists and established protocols, coupled with routine audits and maintenance of improvement logs, serves a dual purpose. Not only do these measures bolster your security protocols, but they also function as tangible evidence of conscientious efforts to ensure responsible HIPAA security practices. This proactive approach is proven precedent of diligence and can be pivotal in mitigating financial and legal liabilities in the event of a breach.
Step 3: Educate and Empower your Team
Given that ransomware attacks can exploit team members through phishing attempts via email, involving your team in your ransomware prevention plan is pivotal in fortifying your practice against these threats.
Initial steps involve:
- Comprehensive Staff Trainings that educate your team on HIPAA best practices, and identifying and responding to potential ransomware threats.
- Establishing a Privacy and Security Officer as per HIPAA, which is a great way to ensure compliance, and to distribute responsibility and awareness of security practices throughout the team.
Empowering your team with the expertise to identify and respond to ransomware threats, particularly emphasizing email-based phishing attempts, establishes a crucial line of defense in safeguarding your practice’s valuable data.
Step 4: Consider the Shift to Web-Based Software
Implementing web-based software in your Endodontic practice is the most effective way to mitigate ransomware threats and significantly reduce your IT costs. It also ensures you’re not in a position of having your physical data stolen, or destroyed by a natural disaster.
Initial steps involve:
- Leverage industry-leading benefits of web-based software, such as secure cloud storage, automatic backups, encrypted data transmission, and readily available security updates.
- Removing the physical liabilities of data stored locally in your Endodontic Practice.
Shifting your Endodontic practice management to a web-based software significantly enhances your defense against ransomware threats. While it’s important to note that no solution can guarantee absolute immunity, web-based softwares by nature safeguard your data on a secure remote cloud server, and often comes with continuous monitoring, ongoing updates, and robust support, strengthening your practice’s resilience against potential ransomware attacks.
Step 5: Insure your Practice
Despite the significant risk reduction achieved through these steps, it’s essential to recognize that ransomware attacks of varying degrees are still possible. While your practice manages electronic patient records and communicates digitally, insuring your Endodontic practice with Cyber Liability Insurance will provide protection against financial liabilities that come from a data breach.
Initial steps involve:
- Assess your practice’s needs by evaluating the specific risks and vulnerabilities of your practice to determine the necessary coverage.
- Research Policy options by comparing coverage, limits, and premiums of various options.
- Choose a Trusted Provider select a reputable insurer with cyber incident support, preferably through a provider with proven experience in your state and with HIPAA compliance. Many companies like At-Bay Stance provides an Exposure Managers to help you monitor your practice’s digital assets.
- Review your policy details carefully by examining the terms and understanding what is covered – including any exclusions or limitations, as well as your legal responsibilities to ensure approved coverage if a data breach occurs.
In essence, Cyber Liability Insurance serves as a vital safety net, offering crucial support in the event of a data breach, but don’t plan on Cyber Liability Insurance covering any breach. The key lies in meticulous scrutiny of your contract terms, ensuring you understand your security prerequisites that guarantee coverage. This might encompass furnishing evidence of security audit logs, or other documentation proving you are using best practices to mitigate a breach otherwise.
Conclusion:
Overall, Endodontic practices managing patient data on local servers face elevated risks of data breaches, corruption, and loss due to ransomware threats. While fortifying your local security demands considerable time and expenses, it’s absolutely necessary. A web-based solution like DentalEMR can help with the security heavy lifting by storing, routinely monitoring, and updating your data securely on the cloud, a valuable investment for safeguarding your practice’s data integrity.
- Dental Compliance. (n.d.). The Value of Your Dental Records and What Happens with Stolen PHI. Dental Compliance. Retrieved from https://dentalcompliance.com/blogs/news/the-value-of-your-dental-records-and-what-happens-with-stolen-phi