Cyber Liability

Cyber liability in healthcare is a topic of increasing concern. Healthcare providers are becoming larger targets for phishing, malware and ransomware attacks due to the access the patient database can provide. Knowing your vulnerabilities and what assets you have in play is a critical part of protecting your practice from a malicious attack. Do you have laptops or flash drives that leave the building? How are they protected? How are patient files stored and who has access? Have you provided training to your staff on how to identify and respond to potential cyber breaches? These are important questions that all practices need to be answering as the healthcare landscape increases. Healthcare practices are now significant users of what is called the “Internet of Things”, the collection of equipment, tools and resources that are part of the internet.  These tools speak to each other, gather and provide information, all with the goal of providing more comprehensive healthcare to your patients. But they are also open and vulnerable to breaches. Knowing how to protect those tools and what to do in case of a breach can save time, money and resources. It starts with training your staff to recognize red flags such as suspicious emails, phishing attempts and social engineering techniques.  Creating an incident response plan is an effective way to ensure that in the event of a breach, your facility will be ready to handle the situation calmly and efficiently. 

The lawyers at Klein Cook Olson LLC are experienced in advising clients, in particular healthcare practices and entities, in how to reduce the risk of cyber breaches as well as being experienced in litigation involving cyber breaches. We are here to help in many ways, including: cybersecurity readiness assessments (is your current system effective and compliant), assisting with drafting policies and procedures and incident response plans, medical data protection, data breach incident response, health information privacy, privacy gap assessments and regulatory laws.