Data breaches are a growing threat for healthcare companies, with more than 350,000 patient records breached in February, Becker's reported. Here, cybersecurity experts give seven tips to prevent and prepare for a data breach.
Seven suggestions to prevent a data breach:
- David Kennedy, former NSA and Marine Corps hacker, told CNBC in a March 8 interview that data breaches are preventable if companies bolster their defenses around detection.
- Mr. Kennedy said companies need to constantly evolve and innovate their cybersecurity practices to make sure they're identifying the latest threats.
- Kayne McGladrey, a senior member of IEEE and a cybersecurity strategist, told Becker's that organizations can prevent initial unauthorized access by requiring multifactor authentication with unfamiliar IP addresses or devices.
- Mr. McGladrey said organizations can detect a data probe early by looking at log file entries. However, he said logging files are often not configured to represent cybersecurity threats.
- Once an initial probe is detected, it needs to be responded to much more quickly. Mr. Kennedy said that Microsoft, in a recent cyberattack that has affected at least 60,000 victims, first discovered the data probe in January but did not have a patch ready until March.
- Healthcare organizations should have multiple backups of data, including offline, Mr. McGladrey suggested. This can help if an organization needs to rebuild their servers from scratch.
- Incident responses and recovery plans should be updated biannually. Mr. McGladrey said, "Effective incident response plans must cover preparation, detection and analysis, containment, eradication and recovery, and post-incident activity."