Do your part. Be Cyber Smart.
Do Your Part. #BeCyberSmart. That’s the theme for the 18th annual Cyber Security Awareness Month which reinforces the importance of all of us here at BHG to own our role in protecting our part of cyberspace and taking personal accountability for ourselves and our patients’ data and privacy. As you’ve seen, BHG has invested in building a secure, modern technology infrastructure over the past couple of years to help us operate more efficiently and provide quality care for our patients. Protecting patient privacy plays a significant role in complying with HIPAA regulations.
According to a 2019 NIH National Biotechnology Institute report, healthcare data is one of the most attractive to cyber criminals because they contain financial and personal data, can be used for blackmail, and are ideal for fraudulent billing. They are also remarkably vulnerable to penetration because of the fluid and always-evolving nature of a patient’s medical care and because of the number of clinicians, facilities and transactions required to connect patient care across multiple settings. The addition of mobile healthcare devices and connected healthcare delivery systems makes healthcare data more attractive but also more vulnerable.
If you have suspicions about an email you’ve received, don’t open it. Instead, click on the “Phish Alert Report” button in the upper right-hand corner of your email task bar. Next time a random link or message from an unknown source appears on any of your devices, just remember to “do your part and be cyber smart.”
High Five for MFA
In August, we asked you to take necessary steps to have multi-factor authentication activated when logging into our system. Today, I’m happy to report that the majority of our staff have completed those steps. I’m reaching out to those who haven’t yet been activated, so be looking out for my email. On behalf of the IT Team, thank you!
