Why you might want to make sure your credit is where you left it.
A recent consumer survey suggests that more than half of Americans still haven’t checked their credit report since the big Equifax breach late last year, which exposed Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses and other personal data of nearly 150 million people.
The problem here is that a good swath of people affected by the breach are keeping their heads in the sand and aren’t even checking to see if they’ve been affected.
One of the most recent very visible results of the Equifax data breach has been in fraudulent tax filings.
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With ransom and phishing attacks on the rise in 2018, most businesses struck with an attack have no clue what to do to respond to an attack.
Now that we know that lightning strikes twice when it comes to ransom attacks (i.e., once attacked, your chances of a subsequent attack are very likely), it’s more important than ever to be prepared to completely remediate an infection and respond to an attack post-infection.
Since reinfections are becoming the norm rather than the exception, I want to take a few moments to cover how to make sure a cyberattack doesn’t happen again.
5 actions to not overlook after a cyberattack:
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How Poor Web Monitoring And Policies Lead To Wasted Costs And Increased Data Breaches.
Maybe you know someone in your office that is addicted to Buzzfeed (that addictive media site with all sorts of cool and crazy news) or maybe you know someone constantly on Facebook, looking at friend’s updates throughout the day.
Whatever the site, the fact of the matter is that your users are landing online and are most definitely exposed to questionable websites throughout their workday (that is, if you aren’t taking steps to make sure malicious or distracting and unproductive web content is not prevented).
With over 2 zettabytes of data online today (that’s equivalent to 2 TRILLION gigabytes!), there is a LOT of stuff on the network that will not only waste your user’s productivity, but will certainly risk your network from malicious ransom infection.
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Based on some recent studies out of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology comes alarming evidence that many of us are getting sick from our computers and other electronic devices.
One recent study specifically out of the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill found that bacteria are more than at home on your keyboards and phones, pressing for recommendations to regularly sanitize work spaces to prevent you and your coworkers from getting seriously ill.
The study evaluated several sorts of bacteria and the conclusions were simple: clean up your work space.
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While many of us may not really care too much if we overstep a few HIPAA regulations because we’re too busy trying to keep our business afloat, we often forget that all security risks are NOT created equal. While some HIPAA regulations may simply protect very minor data leaks [yes, keeping patients safe is definitely your goal, but errors happen], big ransom attacks may cause your business to STOP.
The biggest impact of a ransomware attack? On your medical billing. Without the flow of bills going out and payments getting processed and coming in, how in the heck are you going to pay for your staff and equipment?
With a ransomware attack, will you be able to continue to treat patients? Or will you start having to turn them away because you don’t have their records and don’t want to risk malpractice because your notes aren’t all where they should be (they all are encrypted from that nasty attack that just hit!).
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Ransomware is hitting the healthcare field more frequently than any other industry. Why?
Hackers and criminals understand that healthcare data is precious. Doctors want to protect their patients. They want to keep their patient records from criminals to protect their identities and prevent data theft. They want preserve a trusting environment where patients can share what is really going on so that proper diagnoses are made and treatments administered. The care about the people under their care and don’t want to compromise best possible care (by keeping meticulous secure records to ensure patients are consistently getting care they need and not having to worry about their identities being compromised).
As a business owner, you worry about your office being up and running when it’s supposed to be. Most importantly so effective treatments are done timely, but also to get billing out and payments in. Essentially, you worry about keeping the lights on, keeping your staff paid, and keeping your medical operations running.
As we put more demands on healthcare—with an aging population or with bouts of emergencies related to outbreaks or illness, we all depend on the healthcare system to run seamlessly. But in talking to doctors and administrators, what I’ve found is that many worry that their data systems are not keeping up with even basic security to prevent them from getting ransomware and data breaches.
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