Lack of Updated or Existing Anti-Virus Software

Many physician practices run free versions of anti-virus software or none at all. Anti-virus is critical to maintaining the health of the network. Not only can a virus infiltrate the network, but also allows “back-doors” for a hacker to cause further damage. Everyone has heard the destructive stories of virus attacks dating back to the earliest publicity of the "I love you" virus, but not everyone is updating or even installing this software.

SupportNet recommends this preventative measure should be taken with one of the top three vendors: Trend Micro, Symantec or McAfee. Software licenses should be maintained as future malware will only be prevented with software updates. Purchasing longer lengthed license agreements - such as 2 or 3 years will decrease the per license cost.

SupportNet also provides hosted email scanning to all customers at no cost, to ensure email arrives to the servers in a healthy state. This is just an added layer in healthcare IT security.

Physicians - Make sure PM/EMR is being backed up

Practice Management/Electronic Medical Record data is commonly not being backed up. On a number of occasions we have found that a practice is running a backup every evening, taking the tape off-site or to a safe – however there actually isn’t any data being backed up. There needs to be a verified recurring nightly backup and preferably one off-site backup procedure.

Simply having a backup run does not guarantee that you are backing up all or partial PM/EMR data. This is not a difficult procedure to confirm, but necessary as part of your daily tasks. Make sure to confirm the start/stop times of the data backup run, how much data was backed up and if there were any errors during the procedure. Keep an eye on your growing server data and always compare what really is on the server and what is being backed onto a tape. For example, if your Practice Management database is 1.25GB of data on the server then compare that to what the tape reads.

SupportNet views (daily) the resulting reports from the backup process and compares it to the server and the backup media. This is confirmed on a daily basis. We also setup backups to an off-site location and potentially a third backup onsite. Our team also practices the restore process of each customer’s backup data in case of emergency.

Wireless network vulnerabilities for Physician Practices

Unsecure Wireless (Wi-Fi) networks that are not setup and configured optimally are one of the top IT liabilities for Physician Practices. Unless the practice is allowing guest accounts for – patients, visiting physicians, or vendors – there should be no broadcasting and promotion of the networks SSID (network name). There is no reason. Wi-Fi routers should be setup with WPA or better encryption. MAC addresses should be integrated into router tables and nobody else should know you have a wireless network.

SupportNet provides 24x7 monitoring of customer Wi-Fi networks. Our monitoring can identify outside threats and malicious attack attempts as well as abnormal internal activity such as larger than normal data traffic which could equate to unauthorized usage.