Netgain

Healthcare organizations have been naturally migrating to the cloud, and for good reason. However, recent statistics show that choosing the right provider to effectively meet their unique needs can be challenging.

In the past year, the healthcare industry has seen a spike in the number of healthcare organizations switching their hosting providers. When evaluating why organizations are making the switch, we’ve found there are four primary reasons. The advice they’d give others is to ensure that the hosting provider you select meets these key standards:

Ransomware attacks are real and they are on the rise – affecting organizations of every shape and size.

Ransomware, a malicious type of software, indiscriminately encrypts a company’s files, and the malware operators require payment of a ransom to provide the ability to decrypt the files. Ransomware can be installed by simply visiting a website that happens to have malicious advertisements. In nearly every case, decryption without paying the ransom is impossible which leaves the company only four options: Restore from backup, pay the ransom, recreate the files, or live without them.

The changes the healthcare industry have faced in the last couple of years have been significant. At Netgain, we’ve helped practices implement their EHR and navigate complex technology challenges. And while this technology seemed like a disruptive force in the beginning, practices have settled into their new “digital realities” and are starting to see the operational benefits of these systems.

Every year when spring arrives, people celebrate the end of winter and begin to emerge from their hibernation. It is during this season that summer preparations begin. Winter things are packed away, birds start building nests, and the deep greens of nature appear. Spring is a season of refreshing, whether a person, a bird, or nature. Though it is often not something we consider to be a part of spring-cleaning, an important aspect of our lives that needs to freshen up is our computing environment. Here we have provided a list of some critical items to put on your spring cleaning list. Doing so is a fantastic way to help you and your organization remain safe and secure.

Social Engineering is the psychological manipulation of people in an effort to have them perform actions or divulge confidential information, and it is a major security issue. For centuries, con artists have used this method to gather confidential information for criminal use. In the modern world, the con artist has additional tactics including the installation of malware.

The optimal method to assure your organization does not suffer due to a network attack is to prevent attacks from causing any damage. There are several ways to reduce the likelihood that attacks will impact your business, all with varying degrees of cost, difficulty, and effectiveness.

2015 was rife with widespread propagation of ransomware and 2016 will be much the same.

What is it?

Ransomware is different than most historical malware. Instead of hacking into a computer to acquire and sell sensitive data, ransomware encrypts the data so it is unusable until the user pays a ransom. The hacker doesn’t have to conspire, nor share the payoff, with anyone. CryptoLocker, a Russian, email borne malware, is the most notorious of known ransomware. It is estimated to have extorted more than $30 million.

We all login to many websites. Online banking, social media, and shopping and news sites are just a few examples. Chances are we even created accounts on now long-forgotten websites. And, like many other people we used the same, or only a few different usernames and passwords. And worse yet, we may have used the same login credentials as we use at our place of work. That is a problem—others can gather our credentials from less protected sites to gain access to our sensitive healthcare data. It happens all the time. Exploiting human behavior to defeat security safeguards remains the leading cause of breach.  

With the CMS Final Rule for Meaningful Use about to be released, the question you need to be asking yourself is, are you ready? It has been easy to be in the mindset of taking a break from the craziness of the Meaningful Use Program but the time is drawing near for the final rule to be published and the reporting period to start if you haven’t already.

The proposed rule will allow providers to report for any 90 day period but you shouldn’t wait until the last quarter to get everything in order.

First off, a little back story. If you don't know what CryptoLocker is, it is a very effective piece of malware. Specifically, it is a type of malware that holds your information for ransom. Once installed in a system, it will communicate with some website to acquire an encryption key. OpenDNS and Cisco Web Security, mentioned in my previous post, can help in blocking the malware's encryption key request. When this happens, the malware will still exist on the computer, but without the encryption key, it cannot encrypt anything.