It’s an unfortunate situation, but cyber attacks have become a regular, daily occurrence. These criminals are looking for any possible vulnerability they can find and your radiology department needs to be proactive in making sure they don’t become the next victim.
Healthcare organizations have fallen behind when it comes to funding for preventing cyber attacks. Also lacking are the resources, time and energy it takes to build a solid strategy for combatting attacks.
Acting Now Reduces Risk
If you don’t already have a solid security strategy, you need to develop a strategy that at some level involves each individual, as every person in your department can be a reason security breaches occur in the first place.
Accountability is a big issue, as anyone with access to the network can be the source of a phishing scam that leads to data being compromised. Educating everyone on the present day threats is a great place to start.
Next, realize that cyber criminals seek out the easiest targets, which means you need to audit your situation and find any exploitable target. From something as simple as a firewall to more advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence used in traffic monitoring solutions, putting the right technology in place will limit your vulnerabilities.
Knowing where and when hackers will strike is the unknown element to most cyber security strategies. Whether it’s a ransomware attack, phishing scam, malware attack or tampering with data, nothing is off the table for most hackers. They have had great success in targeting small- and medium-size medical practices, mostly because these organizations often lack the manpower to focus on developing a strategy that protects them.
Cloud-Based Assistance
With so many applications living in the cloud these days, adopting cloud-based radiology solutions can be a bonus, because vendors have strengthened security protocols to keep their clients safe.
Any reputable vendor of radiology solutions has developed many safeguards, because doing anything less can lead to an increase in attacks. At OffSite Image Management, we make security and privacy one of our top priorities. Our host of cloud-based solutions, whether it’s cloud PACS, telehealth solutions such as our TeleRAD360 or our digital mammography solution, everything comes with a forward-thinking bend on security.
At OffSite, our hosted services run in our dedicated environment, which is a privately owned data center. We don’t share resources with AWS or Microsoft Azure, which means your radiology department will have all the dedicated resources it needs when you partner with OffSite.
Part of being secure is also having backups at the ready. At OffSite, we know that redundancy is important for any department. That’s why we have incorporated backups in all of our services, which ensures maximum uptime.
For more information on how we protect our clients, contact us today.
