Data security is an important consideration for any business these days, but in the healthcare industry, it should always be a priority. You hold a lot of very personal information about patients and if you lose that data, the ramifications can be huge. You will lose the trust of your patients and it is likely that they will go elsewhere. This can be incredibly hard to come back from because trust is so important in the healthcare business. There are also a lot of laws in place to protect patient data and if you are found to be non-compliant, you will be forced to pay huge fines and, in some cases, you could find yourself in serious legal trouble.
If you are running a healthcare business and you are concerned about data security, here are a few important tips that you need to follow.
Educate Your Staff
Educating your staff is one of the best things that you can do to improve data security in your healthcare business. When you first start your healthcare business, make sure that all of your employees have a full understanding of the laws around patient confidentiality and data protection for medical records. You should also cover basic things like how to set a strong password and the best way to send data securely if they need to. By educating staff, you can reduce data loss through human error. A lot of people don’t realize that many cyber-attacks are attacks of opportunity that are successful because somebody made a simple mistake and left the business in a vulnerable position.
Have a Backup in Place
This is so important because, regardless of how well you manage your security, there is always the chance of an attack. If that does happen, you need to be able to recover all of the lost data quickly so you can limit the damage. Make sure that you hire a healthcare IT services company that can put a backup and disaster recovery system in place for you. That way, you can recover data and get your systems back online right away, so you can continue to serve your patients and limit the amount of data that is lost.
Limit Access to Data
There are certain employees that need access to patient records in order to do their job, but not everybody in the building needs full access. You can reduce the chance of data loss by limiting access to data and only allowing access to people that actually need it. The more devices that data is accessed and stored on, the more opportunities hackers have to access it, so you need clear limitations in place.
You should also have a clear monitoring system in place so you can accurately track data usage. This will help you to ensure that data is only being accessed by authorized employees and if data loss does occur, it will be easier to work out where the breach occurred.
Poor data security practices could ruin your healthcare business and land you in legal trouble, so make sure to follow these tips.