If you’re in the healthcare industry, you already understand the importance of safeguarding your healthcare data. However, are you doing everything you can to combat breaches?

The costs associated with healthcare data breaches should be enough of an incentive to get most organizations up to speed on their security plans. Ponemon’s Cost of Data Breach report shows that for every patient’s record that is breached, it costs the organization $408. And now that thousands, if not more, patient records can be breached in seconds with electronic files, this fine can quickly become millions of dollars.  To avoid the cost of compromised data, here are a few areas that are key to consider for your security strategy:

Fast Action

The average time it takes healthcare providers to discover a breach is nearly 200 days. After it’s discovered, the average time it takes to get it contained is another 60-plus days according to the report by Ponemon.

By putting monitoring tools in place, you can keep a closer eye on traffic and red flag suspicious activity. This can significantly reduce any damage that might occur when your system is compromised.

Variation in Breaches

While the average cost of a breach in healthcare is $408 per patient record, the type of attack can also influence what a fine will run. For example, human errors will cost you almost $128 per compromised record. If you have a system glitch, the cost is close to $131. If you have malicious activity going on within your organization, that can lead to a cost of almost $157 per compromised patient record.

Ransomware attacks can be particularly damaging to an organization. Some organizations have had to completely rebuild their systems after such an attack, costing millions of dollars.

Reputations Take a Hit

While the fines might sting, worse is the damage an attack can cause to the reputation of an organization. Others will hold you accountable, which means you will probably notice strained relationships with your vendors, and certainly with your patients who are now more susceptible to identity theft after their information has been compromised. Persistent negative media exposure is never a good thing. 

Protection Devices

Automated security technology has stepped up in a big way to offer added protection to your healthcare data. The report from Ponemon says that for those institutions that have them in place, they’re reducing their over breach costs by $1.5 million. And cloud has emerged as one such solution that has helped businesses find security where legacy hardware failed before. 

Every good strategy has an incident response team in place, and a solid plan from which to work. Every employee knows exactly what steps to take in the event of a security breach, and they jump on the issue immediately to remediate losses. This means there is less down time, less damage, and it all results in fewer fines and less harm to the organization’s reputation.

Even with the right cloud technology, dangerous hackers honing in on your organization will be inevitable. Getting operations back quickly and safely, is key. Additional to the right technology, a stable provider can help you navigate this tricky world of cyber security, healthcare data breaches. Third-party security experts and cloud service providers are in the trenches of the latest security trends and solutions to proactively.

About Effortless

Effortless is a business cloud services provider that offers an all-in-one, managed cloud environment including solutions for security, virtual desktops, disaster recovery, servers, compliance, managed network infrastructure (next gen firewall, switches, Wi-Fi), email, and helpdesk. Effortless partners with clients to improve operations, efficiency, and mobility with its “as-a-service” model and dedicated account management. Effortless delivers and fully supports a secure ecosystem of complementary cloud products and services giving customers a single solution provider for entire IT environments.

Contact Effortless for more information or to schedule an interview.