Taking a Proactive Approach to Data Security in Your Practice

There’s a saying that time waits for no one. Well, neither do disasters like a global pandemic, an earthquake, or a cyber-attack. They strike without an announcement, destroying infrastructure that housed paper records, wiping out or stealing patient data, all while rendering your practice inaccessible for an unspecified amount of time.

Now that may sound dark, but it’s a reality that many businesses have faced, especially in the last year. Uncontrollable events like those listed above, magnify the need for your practice to have an IT Disaster Recovery Plan as well as a trusted software partner—like Eyefinity—to keep your data safe and your practice functioning, even in the worst of times.

What Is an IT Disaster Recovery Plan?

An IT Disaster Recovery Plan is a documented policy or process designed to assist your practice in response to a natural or man-made disaster, protect patient and company information, and promote recovery.

It explains what actions your practice must take before, during, and after a disaster, so that your entire team can stay on the same page. An IT Disaster Recovery Plan should address both natural and man-made disasters such as hacking or equipment failure.

Do I need an IT Recovery Plan?

Private practices are especially vulnerable to cyber and ransomware attacks because many lack dedicated IT staff or adequate computer/network capabilities. This makes them easy targets for email or phishing scams, password breaches, or server attacks.

While disasters are rare and unpredictable, the cost of not having a plan can cast a wide net of consequences. Some of the risks include:

• Complete loss of data
• Business interruption
• Loss of patients
• Damaged reputation
• Business failure

Can your practice handle any of these risks? If the answer is no, then it’s essential for your practice to build a plan.

How Do I Make an IT Recovery Plan?

Creating an IT Recovery Plan involves considering many “what if” situations and assessing your practice’s vulnerabilities. Before you start making your plan, it’s important to take a step back and evaluate your current systems. Are you using the latest antivirus software and workstations? Do you have multiple copies of your paper files or is your data automatically backed-up to the cloud? When was the last time you upgraded your server?

Having a secure practice means that you are keeping up with updates, equipment upgrades, and ensuring you are frequently backing-up your data. It’s important to be proactive in protecting your practice, but should you ever run into trouble, a basic IT disaster recovery plan should help get you back up and running as quickly as possible. Some of the essential steps include:

1. Assessing damage: Determine if data was compromised and if so what type (passwords, credit card numbers etc.)

2. Responding immediately: Change all logins and passwords. Determine if banking information was taken and ;outline steps to notify financial institutions.

3. Advising customers, suppliers and anyone else affected: Notify patients and others as soon as you are aware of a breach or disaster by sending an email, updating your website, or posting a flyer. Provide details of what data was breached, what your practice is doing to rectify the breach, and any actions they need to take.

4. Performing an audit to determine the scope and vulnerabilities If there is a cyber-attack, determine the source of the breach and any criminal activity that may have occurred.

How Does Eyefinity Protect Your Data?

Unfortunately, disasters do happen. The good news is that Eyefinity is your proactive partner in data security, taking all the necessary steps to reduce risk. With Eyefinity’s cloud-based software you can rely on:

• Unlimited cloud data storage on Amazon Web Services that ensures you can securely access your data anywhere, anytime. 
• 24/7 monitoring so that all security patches are covered, greatly reducing the potential for a breach.
• Automatic security and regulatory updates, so you always have the latest anti-virus software on Eyefinity EHR and Eyefinity Practice Management.  
• A sophisticated data backup and recovery process, so if you ever need to recover from a disaster, you can do so as quickly as possible.
• Eyefinity EHR’s ENAC Accreditation that recognizes that our software is secure, can maintain data confidentially, and follows industry-established standards and HIPAA regulations. 

Disaster prevention is one of the reasons why we are one of the most widely used practice management and electronic health records provider—we give you the tools to get back to mitigate risk and recovery faster.

Interested in learning more about what Eyefinity has to offer? Request a demo or contact our Account Executives by emailing sales@eyefinity.com or calling 800.269.3666, option 2.