For businesses that rely on their websites for revenue or as their customers’ main gateway to information, there’s nothing more frightening than the threat of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Revenue lost, service interrupted, brand identity marginalized, trade secrets or customer data stolen; it really does sound like the worst-case scenario. Some companies hope that they are too small to be noticed by hackers, others that their size alone implies they must have ample security to survive a DDoS attack. Both ways of thinking are horribly misguided, as has been proven time and again.
Physiology of Fear Driving Healthcare IT – or Is It Real?
The healthcare cybersecurity market is expanding at an incredible rate. An April 2016 Grand View Research report projected that the scope of the industry would reach $10.85 billion by 2022. That may sound high, but it now looks like it was an underestimate: a February 2018 analysis released by Market Research Future predicts that health information technology (HIT) security will rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22% through 2022, ballooning from $4.8 billion to $15.82 billion.
Blockchain Security & Compliance: Is This the Future?
The technology that pushed Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies into the public eye is a distributed ledger, better known as blockchain. This approach gives any entity that uses it an ongoing and dynamic transaction log. Over time, data is shared and compared to various other nodes, all of which continually have an up-to-date database copy. Auditing controls the adding of transactions to the database. By distributing transactions in this manner, you are able to remove single points of failure (SPOFs); prevent the controlling of the ledger from a single position; and verify all your transactions, with no need to utilize an independent service. All transactions are public, making it much less likely that the ledger is gamed to meet the needs of a nefarious party.
Why Do Medical Billing and Coding Companies Need HIPAA Hosting?
Medical billing providers and healthcare programmers cannot simply be satisfied with standard hosting, but instead should implement HIPAA-compliant hosting whenever sensitive health data is transferred server-side. This is because organizations like medical billing companies and healthcare programmers are business associates that have direct responsibility for compliance; because the expenses for breaches (which HIPAA hosting is intended to prevent) extend far beyond the fines; and because the definition of a breach is broader in recent years than it was prior to 2013.
What Can You Do with a VPS and Cloud Server?
Choosing the right direction with hosting gets a little complex. For instance, you might think that there are strong points to be made for using virtual private server (VPS) hosting just as there are for using cloud hosting. Actually, these two options are not contrary to one another but can be complementary: you can get a VPS within a cloud infrastructure. That cloud VPS hosting option means you can benefit from both of these incredibly popular and useful technological approaches for your backend.
How to Prevent a HIPAA Data Breach
In early October, Henry Ford Health System announced that it had been hacked and that the records of 18,470 patients had been stolen. On July 25-26, Arkansas Oral Facial Surgery Center was infiltrated by a virus that blocked the practice from being able to access images, files, and notes related to 128,000 patients. In September, Augusta University Medical Center announced that fewer than 1 percent of its patients’ records were stolen during a breach; however, this attack was the second phishing effort to work against the healthcare provider in just 5 months. These are just three of the most notable healthcare data breaches that occurred in 2017.
Who Uses DDoS Attacks and Why?
If your business has ever suffered through a Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS) attack, it’s was likely experience you haven’t forgotten, as much as you might like to. For your website, a DDoS attack is like being paralyzed – your website becomes unable to respond to the simplest request, your online store is completely unusable by paying customers, everything that makes your business go suddenly grinds to a halt like you’re stuck in the world’s worst traffic jam.
Why Do Biotech and Pharma Need So Much Computing Power in the Cloud?
For industries like biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, the true power of cloud computing is its ability to push the limits of computer processing to solve the greatest problems of today and tomorrow.
Both biotech and pharma firms are under intense public and governmental scrutiny and are tightly regulated. They also regularly use massive amounts of data as they trial new products, new cures and new solutions. What does the inside view of a biotechnology or pharmaceutical firm look like in the cloud? It’s a massive environment that is harnessing every technology available to change the world. Let’s take a closer look at how biotech and pharma firms harness the power of cloud computing.
How to Prepare for a HIPAA Audit: A 10-Point Checklist
Predicting HIPAA Compliance Trends for 2018 and Beyond
Health expenses add up to nearly one-fifth of the gross domestic product in the United States: at $3.2 trillion, this segment represents 18% of the GDP. The transition to digital environments could lead to total cost savings of $300 billion, particularly related to chronic conditions. By lowering cost, digitizing healthcare effectively makes it easier to deliver treatment, improve quality-of-life, and save lives. However, healthcare technology is also tricky because of the parameters of healthcare law, especially the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology and Clinical Health Act (HITECH).
