Security Breaches Attacking Dentist and General Practice Offices Security Breaches Attacking Dentist and General Practice Offices We hear about large corporations and other lucrative medical facilities security breaches and attempts, making smaller offices feeling less vulnerable to those types of threats. The reality is that any practice regardless of size is vulnerable to ransomware attacks. While large corporations like hospitals have beefed up their security efforts and spend millions on the latest and most innovated tools and credentialed IT employees on staff 24/7, cybercriminals are finding the smaller offices a prime target for the information they want. Why would a cybercriminal want to attack a small office? Smaller offices are less likely to notice a threat due to their own inexperience. Dentists and General Practices often have insufficient securities and provisioned IT components in place to prevent these breaches. Cybercriminals are taking advantage of your front line. They know that you do not have an internal IT department, so they easily bypass through the gates via your very own staff, and most likely your sweet and innocent receptionist. They use a program called ransomware to deceive an inexperienced eye, take your information, and demand you pay in order to get your information back. How exactly are they going to do this? A program called “Ransomware” is a top concern world-wide. It takes very little for a hacker to lock down your information and demand a ransom in order to retrieve your confidential data. The cybercriminal sends a bogus email to your receptionist, or other employee. They open the email and suddenly all of the data on your system is encrypted. The cybercriminal will demand a ransom in order to receive a decryption key. Email addresses are sold all of the time. Attackers can purchase email address and send mass emails out to multiple organizations. Whoever opens the email is who they go after. The emails aren’t your typical spam email. These cons are finding very clever ways of tricking you that an email is legitimate. They will claim an attachment contains medical results and urgent. Receptionists are busy. They are trained to get the important medical information and react swiftly to help the medical staff care for their patients in a timely manner. A receptionist untrained in deciphering credibility and legitimacy of emails is the perfect victim. What can be done to prevent this from happening? 1. The first step is proper training of the employees of your organization. Allowing specialist from a reputable company to come in and educate you and your staff about potential threats and what to look out for is the very first thing you should do. 2. Always have your data backed up frequently. This will allow you to retrieve the most recent data before the attack. 3. If you fall victim to randomware, there are websites available to help unlock your data, but like these deceiving emails, there are deceiving websites as well. Stay compliant with HIPAA and keep your staff, patients, and yourself safe from the repercussions of preventable threats. These threats should be taken seriously no matter the size of your practice, but don’t delay consulting with Veritas about your options. Contact Veritas NOW to protect your practice and your good name! April 4, 2017By Phillip Long Dentist Office, General Practice Office, HIPAA Violations , Security Breach cybercriminals, dentist office security, general practice security, hipaa violations, randomware, security breaches 0 Comment Read More »