Hacking is on the rise and dental practices are not immune from the risks hackers pose to businesses today. In fact, due to the rapidly evolving pace of technology and the single-minded resourcefulness of today’s hackers, businesses, especially in those in the medical industry, face greater risks than ever before.
Bigger businesses have become increasingly harder nuts for hackers to crack, despite a few high-profile hacking instances, making the little fish more appealing targets for many hackers. That’s why your small dental practice must begin creating policies that make your business a less attractive target for hackers of convenience.
Educate Yourself and Your Employees on Cyber Security
It might sound like a buzz word of the future, but the future is now when it comes to securing the information that matters most to your business. Educate yourself and your employees on what needs to be done to secure passwords, improve network security, safeguard person, medical information and reduce the odds of hackers finding backdoors into your network.
Create Policies that Promote Cyber Safety
It might be tempting to allow employees to bring in their own devices to connect to the business network, but it exposes your network, your employees, your customers and your practice to untold risks. The best practice is to create policies that strongly discourage these actions – complete with consequences for offending employees.
Encrypt Your Data
All information has value. Information that’s stored on your networks and not actively being used by employees needs to be encrypted. Most operating systems offer encrypting as a feature. It’s a simple matter to activate and provides a huge benefit when no one is actively logged into the computer.
Unfortunately, your systems are still vulnerable while the computer is operational, which is why you must also set computers to log out after 10 or 15 minutes of inactivity.
Taking more proactive and forward-thinking measures to reduce your risks of getting hacked at your dental practice is the best way to reduce your risks in today’s business environment that is increasingly reliant on technology.