For Medical Practices, Cybersecurity is About Business Survival

Medical practice owners often consider cybersecurity as an unnecessary overhead. However, a recent incident with Change Healthcare challenges that thinking. This cybersecurity incident disrupted the practice's revenue workflow, preventing doctors from submitting claims and receiving payments.

There's a lot this incident can tell us about business survival, the chain of vulnerabilities, and a call to action.

Direct Impact on Business Survival

In today's digital age, businesses must go digital to be efficient, effective, and competitive in their field. The digitization of marketing, operations, care delivery, and revenue cycle relies on tightly interconnected computer systems.

With everything so hyperconnected, vulnerabilities in one system can affect other systems as well. If left unchecked, these problems will be detrimental to you ability to serve your patients. Worse yet, it may render you unable to do business.

Chain of Vulnerabilities

In any industry, there are dependencies between companies that form a chain. In this case, we'd call it a chain of vulnerabilities. From the Change Healthcare incident, we learned that an incident within Change Healthcare was just the start of a greater disruption throughout the chain, and therefore throughout the entire company.

We can no longer view cybersecurity incidents as isolated events. For example, if just one site is unable to make payroll, that could cause a vulnerability chain reaction that affects the whole organization. Needless to say, that makes the issue much harder to resolve.

Call to Action

In the face of serious cybersecurity threats that endanger business survival, what can we do today? Each member of the community needs to do their part for the common good by acting before the attack (precautionary) and after the attack (recovery).

Precautionary measures include conducting data inventory, system inventory, and risk assessment. Bad actors target data because they can sell the data, or hold it for ransom while threatening to release it. The data is created, processed, and stored by applications or systems. By having a good record of data and systems, we can then make a good assessment of the risks that exist and implement controls to minimize the chance of these risks being exploited by bad actors.

Recovery measures include the capability to take appropriate action when an attack occurs. The best time to prepare is before an attack actually occurs. It requires deliberate planning to take appropriate actions that can detect an attack, quickly contain it, and recover from the damage. With this is in place, the business has a much better chance to survive and minimize collateral damage in the industry.

Reach out to a trusted advisor today if you need help. It can feel overwhelming at first, but just like anything else, it's not that bad after you take the initial steps. The first step is to call or email a trusted advisor like Continuant, who can guide you through these steps. As every business is different, a trusted advisor will meet you where you are and provide a roadmap that is appropriate and effective for you.

Continuant can help you with risk assessment and mapping out your options. One key differentiator for a trusted advisor like Continuant is that they form a strategic relationship that can nurture your cybersecurity capability over time. This means that they will work with you to come up with a solution that is appropriate for your budget and current maturity. And they don’t stop there! They'll work with you over time to continually improve your capability and readiness to mitigate cyberattacks. 

As a trusted advisor, Continuant works with multiple partners and represents your interests. Unlike businesses that only sell and promote one thing, trusted advisors represent customers to review the options in the market and make appropriate recommendations based on the customers' needs and situations. This model puts customers in the driver's seat, not feeling pressured to go with just one vendor.

Conclusion

Cybersecurity is important because it affects the survival of your business. A cybersecurity incident impacts not only your business but also your vendors, customers, and the livelihood of your staff.

Fixing cybersecurity issues may seem daunting, but you don’t have to do it all by yourself. Take the initial steps by reaching out to a trusted advisor like Continuant. We'll represent your business interests by constantly reviewing the market to make appropriate recommendations.

Continuant's interest is to form a long-term strategic partnership that benefits us both.