How To Perform A Cybersecurity Assessment For Your Healthcare Practice?

By Author: Medical IT
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According to IBM and the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a single data breach in 2020 was an astonishing $ 3.86 million - and this ignores even the long-term damage to product image that could result from such a breach. In view of the serious consequences of failing to protect your organization's sensitive information and the ever-increasing frequency of cybercrime, ensuring that you are prepared and protected from such attacks is now more important than ever.

Cyber security assessment means analyzing both your company's assets and processes to identify vulnerabilities that could put you at risk of cyberattack attacks. Once those weaknesses have been identified, they are then calculated depending on which ones pose the greatest and immediate risk so that you can implement a risk reduction process in the order of importance.

Cybersecurity risk assessment involves answering questions such as:
What are my organization's most important technical assets?
What is my organization's most sensitive data?
What are the appropriate cybersecurity ...
... threats my organization faces?
What are the chances of those accidents being exploited?
What level of risk is acceptable to my organization?
How can these weaknesses be addressed?

By answering important questions like these, cybersecurity risk assessment gives you an over-the-top view of your organization's online security, enabling you to highlight areas of great concern with identified risk analysis so that you can begin to improve. a plan to deal with those risks in the most efficient way.

There are many compelling reasons why every business should conduct a comprehensive online security risk assessment at least once every two years. Yes, to better protect your company from threats such as ransomware attacks that could disrupt your entire business or data breach that may expose your customers' data and tarnish the image of your product in the eyes of both your customers and your stakeholders. the biggest reason why cybersecurity risk assessment is so important.

However, in addition to this, regular cybersecurity risk assessment helps your organization to comply with regulatory requirements such as HIPAA standards for health care organizations, PCI DSS standards, and GDPR standards and to avoid penalties associated with non-compliance. Lastly, cybersecurity risk assessment gives you and your employees a better understanding of your organization, its security, and its vulnerability - all information that may seem invaluable if you find yourself bribing to respond to cyberattack.

How to Perform a Cybersecurity Risk Assessment
Performing a cybersecurity risk assessment begins with selecting the framework you wish to follow. As we have already discussed, there is a wide range of such frameworks to choose from depending on your industry and location, and taking the time to find a framework that best suits your company's unique IT infrastructure is an important first step in cybersecurity risk. testing process. As mentioned, however, the basic steps to assess cybersecurity risk can be summarized as follows:

Step 1: Get the Value of Your Data
Not all data is created equal, and some information collected by your company and stored is more important for security than other information. The first step in cybersecurity risk assessment is, therefore, to identify data that needs the most protection. This may include important data on your company's operations as well as sensitive data such as customer credit card information that could result in a serious error if it falls into the wrong hands. Sensitive data such as trade secrets and customer information remains very high due to the long-term damage that can be caused by the theft of such data. Data that is important for your company's day-to-day operations is also important to secure, however, as the loss of that data can lead to an increase in your company's downtime.

Step 2: Identify and Prioritize Your Assets
Once you have determined the most important data for your organization, the next step in cybersecurity risk assessment is to highlight the associated assets and keep that data safe. This includes computer hardware and software where the data is stored but also includes assets such as employees who have access to that data, your virtual security controls, and your IT security agreements. The assets you want to explore can be divided into four categories: people, processes, technologies, and data - and it is important to analyze each one individually to find out how big the role of each property category is as well as individual. The property plays into your overall security.

Step 3: Copyright Threats
After determining the most important data protection and related assets, you will now want to continue trying to identify the various online threats posed by your data security and the possibility of the threats being real. Identifying threatening sources caused by cyber criminals and various attacks that they may use to hack your data is a good place to start. Ransomware, malware, cybercrime, bans and threats such as corporate intelligence are common examples of cybersecurity threats that your organization may be at risk of.

Step 4: Identify the risk
Once you fully understand the various cybersecurity threats your organization faces you can continue to search for risks. Within your information systems that may leave you vulnerable to those threats identified through login testing. Risks to your company's online security may take many forms, including risks within software and computer systems you rely on, risks within your employees' policies and procedures, and vulnerability within the physical protection of your assets.

Step 5: Review Your Controls
After identifying your company's most important and sensitive data, asset-related assets, the threats posed to that data, and the risk of putting your most important data at risk, the next step is to assess cybersecurity risk by analyzing controls. you are in a position to reduce your company's threats and risks and use new controls if necessary.

Whether you own a small business or a large organization, regular cybersecurity risk assessments to assess your security risks are an important part of keeping you and your customer data safe.

IT Support Engineer from Australia. Since 2015, providing IT Consuliting Services for Medical Practices, Healthcare Providers, Hospitals and Clinics. I have worked with many different medical software vendors including Medical Director, BestPractice, Blue Chip, Genie Medical, Practix, Stat Health, and more.