The times they are a’changing
In the 1900’s, the world average life expectancy was 31years. By 1950 the world average had shot up to 48 years. Nowadays, it is 71 years. It is no wonder, then, that healthcare industries need to leverage big data to reduce costs and boost performance.
Healthcare organizations – including hospitals, health systems, and healthcare plans - are embracing advanced data analytics to traverse these demanding challenges. Population management, accountable care models, telemedicine, and wearable technologies are all innovations in health likely to deliver enhanced outcomes for patients at reduced costs.
Rich pickings
This year has seen a marked increase in ransomware targeting hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Locking your computer to prevent you from accessing data until you pay the ransom for the key to unlock them is just mean. But when the data – such as drug histories, allergies, and surgery orders – can mean the difference between life and death, it makes hospitals an easy target.
Ransomware generally infects victims through phishing and a malicious attachment or through malvertising. This is another reason hospitals are a perfect mark – many hospital staff are rushed, exhausted, untrained on security awareness, or all of the above.
Prevention
Adopt the best combination of activities for your environment:
- Develop and implement a plan for an end user awareness program
- Evaluate your server backup processes
- Assess your network drive permissions to minimize the impact that a single user can have
- Disable macro scripts from MS Office files
- Appraise your inbound spam and malware protection
- Install a next-generation firewall to protect the hospital network
- Deploy radical endpoint protection
Backup strategy
The most important thing for healthcare businesses to do, though, is to invest in proper backup. Having an instantaneous backup solution at the ready means that if your data should be infected by malware, ransomware, or any other data impacting problem, you can be back up and running within an hour.
Do you have a backup strategy? For more information on, please contact us today.
