Advanced Healthcare Cyber Security for Small Covered Entities

With the FBI warning that healthcare companies are prime targets for hackers, and the FDA cautioned that medical devices need improved security, healthcare facilities need to be on high-alert status. With HIPAA compliance regulations getting increasingly complex, you need advanced healthcare cybersecurity for small covered entities (medical offices with between 8 and 40-50 employees).

An article in Emergency Management released Oct. 25th has this to say on the subject the healthcare data security emergency:

“We have seen in recent years an escalation in the risk to healthcare organizations from cyber threats,” said Steve Curren, director of the Division of Resilience in the Office of Emergency Management, part of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. “Since 2014, we have had 10 distinct breach incidents of health-care organizations where the breach resulted in the compromising of more than 1 million patient records.”

And starting around 2016, attackers ramped up ransomware attacks against healthcare systems. “That has been very disruptive,” Curren said, sometimes forcing hospitals to implement emergency procedures.

Ransomware attacks have “impacted health care directly,” said Monzy Merza, head of security research for Splunk, an enterprise software company. “There were several reports of UK hospitals unable to administer X-rays. The computer equipment attached to the X-ray machines was compromised and attacked by ransomware and rendered inoperable for some period of time.” (See: MedJacking)

Experts say there are a number of reasons for the increased risk — and challenges, some unique to health care, in mitigating it.

“Cybersecurity is somewhat of a nascent discipline,” Merza said. “We’re still learning. Manufacturers are learning how to operate in this new world. The same is true for the operators and owners of these technologies, who are also learning what the best practices are and how to manage them.”

Defeating Healthcare Data Security Threats

Targeted attacks on ePHI have become more common in recent years. With Krantz-Secure Network Defense solutions, however, you can uncover targeted attacks designed to evade detection, and stop spear phishing attacks and social engineering techniques. Our solutions identify advanced malware, suspicious inbound, outbound, and internal network activity, attacker behavior and deliver custom sandbox analysis to detect advanced malware.

As budgets shrink and productivity needs increase, healthcare organizations are moving more data into virtual and cloud environments. Whether your data is kept in the data center, virtualized environments, in the cloud, or all of the above, we can help.

Healthcare organizations have many different endpoints, mobile devices, and an evolving “Internet of Things” connected to their networks. The best protection for this wide range of devices is one that focuses on user behavior (we can help with that, with our security training for healthcare staff).

Also, our User Protection solutions provide interconnected, multi-layered security for any user on any device using any application in virtually any environment and provide integrated Data Loss Prevention.

Many healthcare organizations are making the move to Office 365 to achieve the most versatile benefits of the cloud, as many see it. With Krantz Secure solutions, you can supplement Office 365 security to add the extra layer of protection you need to keep your patients safe.

Healthcare Cybersecurity Gap Analysis & Risk Assessment

Is your healthcare cybersecurity truly HIPAA-compliant? Are you ready for an Office of Civil Rights (OCR) pre-audit? Patients trust healthcare providers to protect their most private information. Are you certain that you’re doing enough to protect them from a data breach?

The first step toward confident cybersecurity in healthcare for small covered entities is to obtain a thorough gap analysis and risk assessment. Next, companies should address security weaknesses and systems that are not HIPAA-compliant. Finally, they must develop more security policies and procedures for ongoing protection.

Ready for stronger healthcare cybersecurity now? Call a Krantz IT consultant today at (212) 286-0325 or email us at Sales@KrantzSecure.com for more information on how our healthcare cyber security services for small covered entities can get your medical office data fully secured and compliance-audit ready!

What’s Your Healthcare Security Peace of Mind Worth?

Healthcare organizations now lose an average of $355 for every stolen patient medical record. In fact, the healthcare industry has the highest data breach cost per capita.* Advanced cybersecurity analysis, design, testing, and regulation will limit this risk – Krantz will make sure of it.

These efforts also safeguard patient confidence. The healthcare industry is especially vulnerable to losing customers because of data breaches. For each of these reasons, cybersecurity should be a top priority for every healthcare company.

Indeed, among the facts uncovered by the recent Poneman Institute and IBM data studies, Larry Poneman’s data breach research in a June 2016 report also concluded that there’s a 26 percent probability that an enterprise will be hit by one or more data breaches of 10,000 records over the next 2 years.

The Krantz Healthcare Cybersecurity Gap Analysis

With a little help from our friends at various security tech vendors, our specialists can now test your entire technology ecosystem for security vulnerabilities. We pay special attention to systems that need to comply with HIPAA.

Thanks to our advanced technological acumen, our healthcare cybersecurity analysis covers:

• The HIPAA Security Rule
• The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule
• A comprehensive Gap analysis
• Internal and external penetration testing
• Web assessment
• Firewall circumvention testing
• Social engineering trials
• Wireless network integrity
• Security architecture review
• Secure network design and testing
• Incident response

Symantec Healthcare Solutions allow us to deliver trustworthy security for patients and professionals, supporting a safer healthcare environment.

We’ve read and thoroughly assimilated the Symantec 2017 Healthcare IT Security and Risk Management Study: Operationalizing Cybersecurity in Healthcare conducted by HIMSS Analytics, which has increased our knowledge-base on how hospital executives, IT professionals, and clinical leadership need to be addressing cybersecurity in healthcare for small covered entities.

Krantz Secure Technology Solutions

We start from the outside and work toward each user device to implement proper data security protocols.

We ask questions like: Are your cloud vendors PCI compliant? It’s a compliance standard that can generally be trusted.

We will place a business-grade firewall at the front of your network that is supported and continually updated. And, we’ll make sure your WiFi networks use strong passwords and encryption protocols. (Keep guest networks separate from internal networks.)

Krantz also offers a business-grade antivirus solution for all PCs and standard email defense software on your network.

Do you know what compliance regulations your medical facility or your business associates require you to have? Not to worry, we can help you determine and abide by them.

Get Stronger Healthcare Cyber Security for Small Covered Entities Now

Call a Krantz IT consultant today at (212) 286-0325 or email us at Sales@KrantzSecure.com for more information on how our healthcare cyber security services for small covered entities can get your medical office data fully secured and compliance-audit ready!