The medical field is becoming a more common target for hackers and other types of cyber-attacks, largely because of the sensitive nature of the data this industry handles daily. For this reason, taking steps to protect your patients' data by securing your practice's devices and programs is a must. Partnering with an experienced managed service provider, or MSP can be an important step in making sure your team has the information you need to take a proactive approach to protecting your medical practice's cyber infrastructure.
Understanding the Cyber Threat Landscape for Medical Practices
Like many fields, the medical field is becoming increasingly vulnerable to potential hackers and other cyber threats. Ransomware, phishing, data breaches, and other types of cyber-attacks aim to give the attacker unauthorized access to confidential data about your patients and your practice. Successful attacks in any of these areas can harm your patients' trust in your practice and even impact their safety.
Becoming a victim of a cyber attack in a medical setting often results in the exposure of confidential information about your patients, such as their specific conditions and treatment information, billing and insurance details, and other personally identifiable information. Patients who decide that your practice is unable to provide the level of care and privacy they expect following a data breach or other major cybersecurity issue may choose to go elsewhere, which may result in significant financial losses and harm to the reputation of your business.
The Role of Managed Service Providers in Cybersecurity
Cyber-attacks can be a serious threat to the security and functioning of your medical practice. However, hiring a managed service provider can greatly reduce the likelihood of such attacks in the first place. Additionally, in case of an unfortunate event, the provider can help you mitigate the potential damage caused by a cyber attack. A managed service provider, or MSP, can help your practice's IT team or other leaders stay on top of the latest cyber security best practices and provide suggestions for filling in known gaps before a cyber attack occurs.
While an MSP can be a helpful asset in a wide range of fields, taking a proactive approach to protecting your data is particularly important in the medical field. An MSP with a high level of expertise in this area can make a significant difference when it comes to finding innovative ways to improve patient care, increase the efficiency of your everyday operations, and identify ways in which your practice may be able to reduce operating costs. In addition, they can also regularly analyze the overall security of your cyber infrastructure and ways in which it can be improved.
Key Cybersecurity Measures Implemented by MSPs
Choosing an MSP that is specifically experienced in partnering with medical professionals can go a long way toward improving the overall functionality and cyber security of your medical facility. Some of the most important ways in which an experienced MSP can benefit your practice include:
- Providing and operating firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and other network security solutions that can block cyber attack attempts from reaching your sensitive data
- Providing data encryption and backup solutions that can quickly keep your data from being lost if a successful cyber attack that reaches your data does occur
- Creating access control and authentication mechanisms that help to ensure that only authorized individuals can access specific data
- Performing regular security assessments and vulnerability screenings to determine where cyber-attacks may be most likely to occur and take steps to patch known security gaps
- Creating employee training and awareness programs to ensure that everyone on your team is aware of current best practices for cyber security in the medical industry and the role that every medical professional plays in protecting your data and your patients
Choose EpiOn for Quality MSP Assistance in the Medical Industry
Partnering with the right managed service provider plays a key role in protecting your medical practice and your patients. EpiOn is a high-maturity MSP focused on delivering Measurably Better IT. Serving Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and points in between. Our approach is built around the Measurably Better ITTM Framework that empowers innovative business leaders with simple metrics to help reduce risk, increase security, improve productivity, and fully leverage their IT investment. We believe that IT should be all about helping you achieve an Outcome with clear metrics and a shared definition of success. We specialize in full-service outsourced IT as well as co-managed IT. We also excel in cyber security, cloud solutions, and voice-over-IP for an additional layer of security. Our customer-focused framework strives to understand the unique needs and challenges of each client to provide the solution that’s best for them. Our framework and commitment are why we consistently rank among the top IT firms in the world.
