Is Your Boston Area IT Company Helping Protect Your Healthcare Organization From Phishing Attempts

With healthcare being one of the most important industries in the Bay State, one would think that a Boston area IT company would make it a priority to offer security that meets the rigorous standards that the healthcare industry requires. Privacy and data protection is a primary concern for all healthcare organizations, with no shortage of breaches having occurred in 2018, and despite the fact that this is such a central concern for the healthcare industry, currently employed practices often don’t offer enough protection.

Can you be certain that your IT company is ensuring your organization maintains full HIPAA compliance? Does it go the extra mile to ascertain that all privacy policies and procedures are robust enough across the board? And how can you know if the IT company you’re using is up-to-date on both the latest security innovations as well as keeping ahead of malicious attempts to gain access to private information? It’s vital to choose a Boston area IT company that protects your healthcare organization fully, so here’s a look at how you can be certain that the company you choose to safeguard your data is up to the task.

What Questions Should You Be Asking Your Boston Area IT Company?

How Do I Protect My Employees Against Phishing Scams?

While cybersecurity has become more advanced to keep up with the latest innovations by hackers, one major trend in breaching security is a return to an old, simple trick. Phishing scams are often extremely simple, especially in comparison to other latest trends in hacking, but they remain a constant threat to keeping data safe because they make use of what can be an unexpected weak point: employee vulnerability.

Healthcare Organizations Are a Prime Target for Phishing Scams

The data which healthcare organizations are seeking to keep private are value-rich for a wide range of malicious actors. From foreign governments to criminals looking to make a quick buck, phishing attempts may be coming from any direction. The phishing attempt is generally simple. It does not try to breach security directly, but instead attempts to fool an employee into believing the hacker is someone who is authorized to receive the private information, creating a scenario where the employee freely shares the private information with the individual who should actually not have it.

One of the most important ways to prevent a phishing attack is to identify it as an attack in the first place, and this is best done by properly training employees to know what to look out for and how to avoid it. In choosing an IT company that understands that part of its security job is not just dealing directly with the technology, but also with the users who are using that technology, you will be empowering your employees to effectively keep your organization’s data secure.

Additional practices that can minimize any damage created by phishing include segmenting network data, so that the damage a breach can do is minimized, as well as conducting regular audits of the entire cybersecurity system to make sure that there are no vulnerable spots, either from the technology or users.

And although phishing is based on a simple premise, latest attacks have shown evolution in this kind of attack, including “spear-fishing” which goes beyond emailing, in order to make use of social engineering to create more effective attacks. Overall, in 2017, we saw an 80% increase in phishing attacks that impersonated someone that the employee knew well.

How Do I Know If My Network Is Vulnerable to Being Hacked?

In short, it is. If you have a healthcare organization that is on a network, be it an entirely internal one, or an external one, it is at risk. The healthcare industry has become the top target for cybercrime in today’s world, and the best way to minimize vulnerability is by choosing the IT company that is well aware of the latest cybercrime techniques, how to defeat it, and also helps healthcare organizations to implement security to operate at every level, including physical infrastructure and employee use.

What’s a Good Policy for Changing Passwords?

Sometimes solving a major security weakness is as simple as choosing a good password. There are a few rules that should always be followed when choosing a password:

• Always choose a password with a minimum of 10 characters
• A strong password is composed of a combination of lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers and symbols
• No password is strong enough to last forever. All passwords should be changed every 3 or 6 months

Security Is Only Strong if Employees Utilize It

Even with an IT company that has addressed all possible threats to privacy, security is only possible if employees fully put into practice all security measures. This is why it’s vital to choose a Boston area IT company that will work with your employees to be certain that not only does your healthcare organization have a solid security system in place, but that it is fully implemented, creating no human-error generated holes that can create potential security breaches.

Radius Executive IT Solutions is the trusted Boston Area IT Company because:

• We use KnowB4 for phishing testing – a trusted, proven solution that works.
• We offer solutions to protect employees against phishing scams (Fortinet firewalls, Kaspersky antivirus, etc.).
• We check to see if your network is vulnerable to being hacked with a thorough vulnerability assessment.
• We help your staff understand useful and proper policies for changing passwords.
• We can make sure your staff is following these proper policies.