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July 2016 IT News & Insights 
 
Ouch... iPhone theft results in $650,000 HIPAA settlement
Catholic Health Care Services, part of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, has been cited by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services for violating HIPAA health information security and privacy rules.

The agency's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a settlement agreement whereby CHCS would payment $650,000 and implement a corrective action plan.

The penalty stems from the theft of an iPhone provided to an employee. In 2013, the employee reported the theft, which included health information for 412 nursing home residents. Social Security numbers, diagnoses, medications and caregiver contact information were compromised.

OCR charged that CHCS made no effort to assess the potential health information risks, had no plans for how it would respond to the data security incident, and was not using encryption or phone password protection to safeguard the phone.

CHCS will develop a corrective action plan that includes data security and disaster recovery policies. OCR will also monitor compliance for two years.

The incident stresses the urgency among all organizations to lock down mobile devices by implementing management tools, secure encrypted email, and ensure mobile devices can be wiped or secured if they are lost or stolen.

DataLink has the expertise and solutions to help protect your business and ensure compliance with government mandates and industry best practices.

Contact us today. (410) 729-0440 | Email
Security blunders IT Pros need to avoid
IT pros are human, but their security lapses can have far more devastating consequences to the business than those committed by ordinary users. Big investments in security technology are wasted when IT professionals ignore the rules.  Here are some security blunders IT pros should take care to avoid:
  • Using weak passwords or the same password for other machines on the network... Brute force attacks work because people still make this basic mistake.
  • Running applications as root... Create unique accounts with specific privileges for each application and service.
  • Sharing Admin accounts... Create separate accounts: one for root and one for each administrator. Whenever an administrator leaves the company, all root and Admin passwords should be reset - immediately.
  • Failing to document changes during troubleshooting... This could leave behind potential vulnerabilities hackers can exploit.
  • Putting passwords in a text file... Discovery by hackers can give them unfettered access to critical systems.
  • Ignoring old accounts... When employees leave the organization, a process should be in place to de-provision their accounts before they leave the building.
  • Being lax about patches... Too many servers are compromised not because of a zero-day exploit, but because a year-old patch was never installed.

DataLink can assist with security risk assessment, compliance gap analysis, and vulnerability remediation. Contact us today. (410) 729-0440 | Email

Using IT Virtualization to simplify Scalability during Expansions
If your organization is going through a major structural change or growth spurt, deployment of virtualization technologies can help ease the pain...

Following a merger, employees in the new business unit often need to start using new applications. Using VDI and a hybrid cloud will help the IT team deploy virtual desktops in minutes. Administrators can control individual or group settings to optimize the entire user experience.

VDI will help the IT team create a proactive and automated resource provisioning and de-provisioning environment. For example, alerts can be set to create new VDI instances when there is a spike in usage. Or, notifications can be sent out if resources are being underutilized on a specific host. The IT team can even control how applications, desktops, graphics, and physical resources are allocated from the data center layer.

Adjusting to market demands becomes easier too... By centralizing key resources (CPU, RAM, graphics, and even applications) the IT team has better control of provisioning and data center management.

Flexible virtualization technologies are important for business agility and scalability. Ready to discuss your strategic technology plans?
Contact us today. (410) 729-0440 | Email
Tips to spot Vendors with Security gaps
With IT security a growing concern, it becomes ever more necessary to ensure that your service providers are equally as serious about security as you are...
  • Is there a dedicated Security officer? 
  • Scan your vendors with online tools. If a problem is revealed, bring it to the vendor's attention and see how they deal with it. Their response may also provide you with an indication of how well their monitoring tools work.
  • Implement a formal process to evaluate your vendors, at least annually. Participation is mandated for PCI DSS and HIPAA-regulated companies. 
  • Use Google to conduct periodic searches for information about your vendors, including financial strength, management changes, security incidents, and litigation.
Security is everyone's responsibility, and it is not confined to your own organization. Need help with your security initiatives?
Contact us today. (410) 729-0440 | Email
Ensuring BYOD access and security with VDI
Bring Your Own Device initiatives present some challenges. First, BYOD users need access to their work applications.  Another challenge is ensuring that personal devices aren't vulnerable to security exploits that may spread to your organization's servers or other computers and mobile devices.

A Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solves both problems. For example, BYOD users connecting to VDI desktops can access a suite of applications installed, controlled and managed by the organization. It doesn't matter what devices users work on, as long as they can run the VDI client software, they can connect to the virtual machine.
 
Many users don't properly manage the security of their personal devices. With VDI, the IT department ensures that the virtual machines are locked down and protected with the latest security software. This eliminates the security risks of BYOD devices because, in effect, they become "dumb terminals" connecting to the VDI desktop.
 
BYOD brings needed flexibility for companies and can be a significant productivity boost for employees with strong preferences to use their own devices. VDI solutions can address the dual challenges of productivity and security.
 
Ready to simplify and protect your IT?
Contact DataLink today: (410) 729-0440 |  Email  
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