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admin99 May 22, 2020 No Comments

Cybersecurity Monitoring is Crucial in the Healthcare Industry

Cybersecurity monitoring is essential for every business to have, no matter the size, as every company must be prepared to defend against malware, hackers, cyber threats, and data breaches. Monitoring serves as a means to detect breaches in near real time and collect logs for further investigation. In the event of a data breach, the logs can be used as forensic evidence. Cybersecurity monitoring also satisfies compliance for HIPPA and Department of Financial Services (DFS) laws.

One specific industry that is a common target for cyber threats and data breaches is the healthcare industry. Hackers tend to frequently steal patient records at an alarmingly high rate as it is one of the most profitable forms of private data that hackers can profit from.

Hospitals and sole practitioners are becoming increasingly susceptible to online attacks and compromising confidential patient data mainly because they host a lot of internet-connected equipment that cannot be secured with traditional endpoint solutions. Not to mention that long and busy days mean healthcare staff do not have the time and resources to stay educated on the latest threats to devices. This is where IT specialists are able to step in to protect healthcare hardware against attacks.

Effective cybersecurity solutions have become a must for all healthcare organizations, no matter the size, as they are all in charge of sensitive patient data. Keeping network devices secure wherever possible helps to limit the damage that could be caused by an attack on medical devices. The number of devices used in hospitals and doctors’ offices makes it hard to stay on top of security. However, healthcare organizations have a responsibility to keep up on the latest online threats to keep their patient data secure. Thus, it’s important for any healthcare organization to take a proactive approach against ransomware by investing in preventive measures and allocating a budget to invest in an IT company for cybersecurity monitoring.

Numerous ransomware attacks were reported against the healthcare industry in 2019 around the country, including Olean Medical Group and Seneca Nation Health System in Salamanca, New York, which caused the healthcare facilities to temporarily lose access to their computers and electronic health record systems.

Protect Your Healthcare Business with Security Information and Event Management

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) is the core technology behind cybersecurity monitoring. SIEM is a specific platform that centrally collects, analyzes, and reports data from multiple devices on your network. Through an advanced correlation engine, it is able to proactively identify security events not otherwise detected by separate security technology. The analysis capabilities of SIEM systems can detect attacks not discovered through other ways. SIEM products can even stop detected security breaches, assuming an attack is still in progress.

When such events are identified, SIEM reports the incident to whoever is responsible for response and remediation. Outsourcing your monitoring to an IT company that specializes in cybersecurity monitoring is the best way to handle events that were identified by your SIEM, including investigation and vetting false positives. Thus, a 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) like Keyskeya Technology gives organizations the security benefits without costly expenses or headaches.

admin April 11, 2020 No Comments

Remote Access to Your Network

Now more than ever companies are permitting their staff to work remotely. Giving employees remote access to your network is a great idea as it increases productivity and allows staff to work anytime anywhere, especially in times of national or global disasters. The recent COVID 19 pandemic is a perfect example of this, many business owners were left scrambling when they were forced to send employees home. Remote access also supports work-life balance and allows your team to access emails, files and other resources while traveling for business.

But no matter what type of company you operate, before allowing remote access to your software and systems, it’s crucial that you develop a remote access policy and strategy that protects your employees and your business.

How Remote Access Works

Remote access allows employees to log in to a system as an authorized user to access business computer systems, software and communications technologies without being physically present at the office. Remote access service enables staff to securely log in to the network from home and share and view files as if they were in the office. However, before a virtual office can be set up, a VPN must first be established to secure connections with a remote computer network. A VPN requires client software to be present on the remote computer and a security appliance or server with VPN services in the main office to authenticate users. A VPN creates a secure encrypted link between the business network and the employee’s computer across the internet.

VPNs are not the only way to access your network remotely. There are many cloud providers that offer secure flexible solutions that do not require a security appliance or server. A remote user can connect securely to a computer in the office using any supported browser or computer.

Though, before investing in a remote access solution, decide what elements of your systems you want to give your staff access to. You want to provide employees with minimal access to the systems that they need to perform their roles and no more.

You should implement strong password policies and educate your staff on password etiquette. Ensure that passwords are never used more than once and enforce password changes at least every 90 days.

Security First

Just like office computers, all remote devices that can access business systems – whether a laptop, tablets or home computer – must be protected with anti-virus software, firewalls and must be up to date on patches. Cloud software providers have invested in security and reliability, with many offering two-factor authentication to ensure only the people you want to access your files can do so. Cloud providers offer a secure way to give staff access to your files, applications and software remotely with a bit more flexibility.

Keyskeya Technology Provides Remote Support

Since a VPN allows wide access to a company’s systems, adequate security precautions must be taken. Thus, setting up a secure VPN can be a complicated task that requires extra hardware and software. Building a VPN is usually a job for IT experts who can also provide guidance on how it can be secured, configured and managed.

Keyskeya Technology provides remote support and IT services that are particularly crucial for staying on top of data management and device maintenance. We can help with your remote access policy and provide the technology and expertise necessary to securely allow access to your company’s network. Keyskeya Technology has a dedicated support team available 24/7 to assist with system operations.

admin March 19, 2020 No Comments

The Importance of Physician Cybersecurity

The health care industry has become reliant on the digitization of data to maintain and share patient information. In addition to the benefits derived from healthcare technology, the rise of digitization in healthcare has brought an unintended side effect – vulnerability of viruses, malware, and hackers to healthcare data. Thus, it’s crucial to protect patient health records and other data from these threats with cybersecurity monitoring.

Healthcare data has become a growing target for hackers as more of it is generated and made exposed via data sharing and through medical devices that communicate with hospital systems. For that reason, it is critical for all healthcare professionals and administrative staff to understand the importance of cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity threats to healthcare organizations and patient safety are real. Such cyber-attacks expose sensitive patient information and lead to substantial financial costs to regain control of hospital systems and patient data. From small sole practitioners to large hospitals, cyber-attacks on healthcare records and medical devices have infected even the most hardened systems. According to the American Medical Association (AMA), nearly one million new pieces of malware are created each day.

Cybersecurity Tips from AMA

The AMA is spreading awareness of cybersecurity and has developed tips on how physicians can protect their computers and network to keep patients’ health records and other data safe from cyberattacks.

To protect against malware ensure that your software and server operating systems are regularly patched and updated.
Create one Wi-Fi network for your practice and another for your patients. For example, practice and practice guest. Make sure to use different passwords for each.
Create and enforce a workplace policy requiring strong passwords. For example, using at least eight characters with a mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols. Change the password every 90 days at a minimum.
Encrypt and password-protect mobile devices, including cell phones, tablets, and laptops.
Make sure to use the most current version of the web browser software (e.g., Internet Explorer and Chrome) and enable automatic updates if possible.

Given the increasingly widespread nature of cyber-attacks, it is imperative that the healthcare industry makes cybersecurity a priority and makes the investments needed to protect its patients. Cybersecurity requires coordination of resources across a number of public and private stakeholders, including hospitals, IT vendors, medical device manufacturers, and governments (state, local, and federal) to mitigate the risks and minimize the impacts of a cyber-attack. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Health Care and Public Health (HPH, Health Sector, Health Care Industry) sector are said to be working together to address these challenges.

Cybersecurity is a Priority for Patient Safety

If physicians are not securing their data with cybersecurity technologies, they risk theft, the loss of private patient information, and loss of access to critical medication lists, diagnoses and lab results. HIPAA compliance is not enough to protect patient records that’s why cybersecurity is crucial. But physicians don’t have to figure out how to protect the records on their own. They can rely on IT and cybersecurity companies for network and system security.

Keykeya Technology offers cybersecurity solutions for HIPAA Compliance. We use state-of-the-art remote access, and system monitoring software to continuously manage our clients’
network to eliminate costly disruptions, data loss, and cyber threats. Our 24/7 Security Operations Center provides threat monitoring and response services and is 100% U.S based. Give us a call (866)-560-9690 so we can get started on protecting your healthcare records with our KeyTech Cybersecurity Services.

admin September 19, 2017 No Comments

CCleaner malware infected 2.27M users

CCleaner, our favorite System Optimization tool has become a victim of Malware!

Users of CCleaner, a free software utility intended to improve system performance on Windows computers and Android devices got some nasty news toward the beginning of the week when Piriform, the organization which makes CCleaner, wrote in a blog post that specific versions of the product had been compromised by hackers — and that malicious,data-harvesting software had piggybacked on its installer program.

The affected product versions are CCleaner 5.33.6162 and CCleaner Cloud 1.07.3191.

Piriform is encouraging users to move up to ver 5.34 or higher

Some users may still have a device that is compromised. Piriform says it’s moving all CCleaner users to the most recent version, while CCleaner Cloud users will be upgraded automatically.

The malware was designed to collect non sensitive information from compromised machines — specifically, Piriform says: the PC name, IP address, installed programs, list of active programs and list of network adapters transmitting it to a server situated in the US.

“We have no indications that any other data has been sent to the server,” it writes.

“Working with US law enforcement, we caused this server to be shut down on the 15th of September before any known harm was done. It would have been an impediment to the law enforcement agency’s investigation to have gone public with this before the server was disabled and we completed our initial assessment,” it added.

A representative for security goliath Avast, which acquired Piriform back in July, said: “We believe that these users are safe now as our investigation indicates we were able to disarm the threat before it was able to do any harm.”

““We estimate that 2.27 million users had the affected software installed on 32-bit Windows machines,” she further added.

CCleaner was estimated as having 130M clients, including 15M on Android. So concerns had been raised about the vast potential number of affected devices.

It appears that the vulnerability was downloaded by a small minority of users — particularly to those utilizing 32-bit Windows operating systems.

No individuals running CCleaner on Android devices were compromised, as indicated by Avast.

Piriform’s VP of products has gone into some detail in regards to the hack, writing that: An unauthorized modification of the CCleaner.exe binary resulted in an insertion of a two-stage backdoor capable of running code received from a remote IP address on affected systems.”

He additionally notes that Piriform initially saw suspicious activity on September 12, 2017, further examination uncovered “the 5.33.6162 version of CCleaner and the 1.07.3191 version of CCleaner Cloud was modified before it was released to the general public”.

That implies some Windows users of CCleaner could have had their machines infected for over a month — the compromised versions were released on August 15 and August 24 individually.

Piriform estimates these versions “may have been utilized by up to 3% of our clients” — which would push the pool of affected computers as high as 3.9M.

Avast declined to speculate on the hackers intentions, a law enforcement investigation currently underway.

Asked what extra measures it’s taking to prepare for a future assault, Avast said “We are making sure the problem doesn’t happen again by moving the entire Piriform product build environment to a more robust, secure infrastructure provided by Avast.”

admin January 21, 2017 No Comments

Managed Services for Cyber Security

Ransomware, Trojan horses, spyware and malware are things small businesses like yours don’t ever want to come across. While the term cyber security was once thrown around to scare businesses into purchasing security software, today’s sophisticated threats can leave immense impact, something that antivirus solution alone can’t handle. With that in mind, we’ve rounded up top cyber attack statistics that prove you need managed services in order to remain safe and operational.

admin January 21, 2017 No Comments

New Malware Disrupting Virtualization Security

One of the central ideals of virtualized technology is the capability to easily isolate cyber security threats. For the industry as a whole, IT experts have been winning this security tug-of-war with hackers, but that may change with the resurrection of a long-dormant piece of malware that targets virtualized desktops. If your business employs any form of virtualization, learning more about this updated virus is critically important to the health of your technology.