Having Data Backup Issues? Use a Cloud-Based Solution
The technology surrounding the healthcare industry continues to advance, which is a plus for healthcare providers, but those advancements also come with risks. Cybersecurity is an ongoing issue that providers address on a daily basis. Preventing breaches of security requires investments in time and money, but it mitigates the risks of compromised data. Data backup, though, is about more than just mitigating risks – it’s also about providing continuity of care.
Since 2009, approximately 30 million Americans have had their health data compromised, according to the Health & Human Services Office of Civil Rights. The OCR estimates that nearly 1,000 data breaches, each affecting 500 or more patients, have occurred. The forecast doesn’t look to be getting any brighter as healthcare privacy attorneys foresee the cyberattacks becoming more complex and more frequent. In April 2014, the FBI issued a report outlining the risks associated with electronic medical records and predatory opportunists who want to sell the information they gain through hacking hospital data.
Portions of the hackers are looking to gain personal information from people so they can file false tax returns. Others are focused on committing insurance and/or credit card fraud. Hackers from other countries are also gaining access to medical records in an effort to gain information on proprietary drugs being used in America.
Phishing schemes are not out of the ordinary today, which adds another risk. Phishing is a method used to trick healthcare workers into clicking on seemingly secure emails that end up opening a pathway to the facility’s data. Whether it’s for gaining information about proprietary drugs, monetary gain, or a political attack, breaches of security are threatening the industry.
Regardless of the size of your facility or hospital group, cyberattacks can be damaging and result in fines. Doing more to protect against attacks shouldn’t include stepping away from technology – it should include embracing it. For instance, the best medical imaging management vendors are utilizing Level IV datacenters, which have top-notch security measures in place to not only protect the images and data from prying eyes, but to also enhance the methods through which images are accessed and shared.
Cloud-based services allow providers to access medical images through a secure URL. The images are streamed securely from the datacenters to a viewer in the workplace, and it’s vendor neutral, which means greater accessibility is achieved. Doctors can now look at medical imaging on their smartphones, tablet computers, laptops, desktops and in-house viewers. These cloud-based solutions also have data backup solutions in place to make sure a malfunction at the local level doesn’t affect archived images.
OffSite Image Management, Inc. is a company leading the way to more secure and more efficient solutions regarding the archiving and accessibility of medical images and HL7 data. Our methods, including data backup, focus on secure image management that doesn’t compromise the speed at which our clients access their images. Get more information about our solutions by contacting us today.