Dental practices and clinics deal with sensitive patient information and data each day. From patient records to sensitive information about various procedures and the business, a lot of unsecured data is at risk of being compromised.
A dental clinic needs to upgrade security and make its IT structures more secure, and you can implement certain upgrades and systems to achieve that:
1. Perform a detailed risk assessment
The first step in improving office security is to begin with a detailed risk assessment. You can contact our managed IT service company to perform a detailed audit of your existing IT infrastructure. Through our audit tool, we can identify and locate gaps within your system and determine whether there are gaps within HIPAA compliance and other regulatory standards.
2. Train your team on cyber-security
Once you have a detailed risk assessment completed and evidence of where gaps lie, you can begin training your team on cyber security. In addition to implementing new, secure IT systems for your dental practice, you need to inform your team on how to deal with various issues, from accessing patient data and health records, to breach notifications, and work on developing protocols and policies for this. Our IT company can help you devise employee training and awareness programs to help them recognize malicious links and phishing scams, use better practices, and get familiar with our IT setups.
3. Develop an Incident Response (IR) Plan
As mentioned above, your dental practice needs a set of policies and protocols to be followed in case of an incident. This Incident Response (IR) plan covers everything necessary to know in case of a data or security breach, including what systems to shut down, breach notifications to send out, and a recovery plan. It’s a detailed, well-thought-out guide on the precise steps and measurements one should take to protect their IT system.
4. Backup your data on a secure cloud
All data should be backed up to a secure cloud platform that will be safe against attacks and malware. It’s cost-effective, far more efficient, and easier to uphold safety measures and software updates using cloud-based IT solutions for dental offices, where you can store patient information and have extensive cloud backup and recovery for your dental practice.
Take these steps to protect patients’ safety and minimize the risk of data breaches and other security threats with our help. If you’re unsure where to begin, you can head to our wall of shame, where we’ve highlighted some of the biggest security mistakes that dental practices are guilty of.
Get in touch with our company and schedule a complete audit of your IT system’s security measures through our powerful audit tool. We offer extensive IT security services for Dental Practices, helping dental offices upgrade their IT systems in line with security requirements from HIPAA, GDPR, and NIST regulations.
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