Picture this:
You are sitting by the fire, under a warm blanket, while watching the twinkling lights from houses outside your window, as you let out a sigh of relief for the winter break you finally get to enjoy.
*Ping! * Your phone lights up with the message you have heard all your friends have started to receive at their practices.
“We have had a breach. I don’t know what we did wrong!”
This is the scene that sends chills down any providers back and signing them up for a chaotic and fury filled new year.
During the holiday rush, clients are trying to pack in last minute visits to their providers, staffing can be spotty due to vacations and time off, and this time has an influx of transactions and higher chance for distraction. Your employees are managing a higher workload, which can often lend itself to skipping protocols to get quicker approvals, and mistakes tend to rise.
During these holiday times, hackers know about these tensions and the higher workload, meaning they are ready to exploit even the smallest mistake.
Obviously, this is what Streamlinz is designed to help you avoid. Our services will line you up for a happy and stress-free holiday season, and a calm new year filled with satisfied patients and knowledgeable staff.
Here are some of the historical trends during the holiday season which you should be aware of to stay safe!
Be Ready to Strengthen Cybersecurity Protocols
With our employees juggling the last-minute chaos of the holiday season, it is important to take a moment to re-emphasize the importance of the work we do, how our everyday actions impact our patients and the team. Remind each other to be mindful with the emails we receive, as they may be phishing attacks, even though we are receiving more requests than normal. Phishing attacks may pose themselves as innocent messages but have harmful links and attachments which can damage your systems and infiltrate your privately stored information.
With the uptick in scheduling and patients in and out of the office, this may be a good time to reinforce offsite backups. If our systems are infiltrated, and potentially goes down, the office wants to be back up and running with as much of our secured information intact as possible. By backing up our data, this will ensure we don’t have the panic of going back through our books as far as we remember to have data reuploaded.
Those extra few seconds for Multi–Factor Authentication (MFA) will thank you in the long run. MFA can seem tedious and pointless during the everyday hustle and bustle, but that means it is doing its job. MFA is designed to keep your accounts secure, and safe from intruders who have possibly accessed your username and password. Brute Force Attacks are common forms of cyber-attacks, which uses trial and error to guess passwords, login credentials or encryption keys. These attacks, although they may be successful, can fail due to the extra protection of MFA, and different passwords for each account.
Train the Team!
Even during the holiday rush, short and concise refreshers and training modules will make all the difference. Keeping policies and procedures at the top of our employees’ minds will reinforce their importance, even during our busiest times. Streamlinz has a library of quick, and to the point modules which are sure to inform employees on their impact, but also have them ready to embrace the hectic holiday season and beyond.
Sending out messages to the team during December and January, such as: “Remember to back up our patient information! We have been doing amazing so far!”
Or asking what has been needing upkeep before it becomes an issue can be crucial to stopping a breach in their tracks. When a breach has occurred, it is already too late. The time is now to be proactive and ready for the holiday season and the new year ahead!
Streamlinz is always here to help, and we wish you a safe and secure holiday season. Keep yourself and your team aware of potential threats and go into the new year with ease.