October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. BESLER’s IT leaders provide us with some ways that your organization can protect itself against cyberattacks.
- Protection Against Ransomware – Education and vigilance coupled with standard tools like URL/DNS filtering and anti-virus/anti-malware can help neutralize threats and keep the bad guys at bay.
- Phishing/Spear Phishing Education – Don’t get hooked! Pay attention to who sent the email and hover your mouse over links. Do they go someplace trusted? Be aware of email that creates a false sense of urgency! When in doubt, contact your IT team.
- Replace Your Outdated Systems – Just because an older system can’t be patched or updated anymore doesn’t mean the bad guys aren’t looking for vulnerabilities in it.
- Supply Chain Risk – If Change Healthcare fell victim to ransomware again tomorrow, would that impact your organization? Could your organization quickly switch to a new provider?
- Assess Your Vendors and Affiliates – Are they following good security practices, or are they endangering your organization by their inability or unwillingness to follow best practices?
- AI Posture – Determine your organization’s risks. Does your organization have products that have added AI features recently? What data is being used? Prevent sensitive data from being used to train AI models.
- Validate Backups – You can’t restore from backup if your backups aren’t valid. Ensure you have the most up-to-date backups available.
- Monitor Privileged Accounts – Set up alerts for suspicious activity. Privileged accounts are one of the first things malicious actors seek out.
- Conduct Regular Security Assessments – You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken. Make these assessments a priority. This is key to your organization’s business continuity plan.
- Incident Response Plan – Develop and maintain an incident response plan to quickly address and mitigate the impact of security breaches.
Prioritize cybersecurity at your organization. Stay vigilant. Be proactive. You are the first line of defense for your organization.
BESLER’s key implemented systems have earned Certified status for information security by HITRUST. We’re also proud participants in the HITRUST Assurance Program, which helps healthcare organizations address security and data protection challenges.
Contact BESLER to learn more.
