Lets dispel some myths about cyber security for small and medium size businesses.

1. YES, hackers do care about your business no matter how big, small, significant or insignificant YOU might think your business is.

2. YES, proper cyber security hygiene is important to all businesses and YES proper cyber security hygiene is more than just anti virus software.

3. YES, remediating after a cybercrime incident is hard and expensive. Sometimes too expense and/or hard for a business to recover. Yes, prevention via proper cyber security hygiene can help, is cheaper and easier. If you lock your doors, it is the same principle. The lock is cheaper than replacing all your stuff if stolen ( and less painful). So if it helps to combat bad guys and/or helps to minimize break-ins / damage .. its a good thing. Ounce of prevention is cheaper than a pound of cure!

4. Yes, you are never 100% cyber secure. The human element coupled with constant changes in technology threats makes being secure a moving target. Best course of action is make cyber security part of how you do every day business and stay vigilant / current related to your defenses.

InfoTech Innovators can help! Contact us today!, sales@infotechinnovators.com, www.infotechinnovators.com

InfoTech Innovators is an IT Consulting firm located in central NJ that specializes in cyber security services for small and medium size businesses, as well as NJ state government and municipalities (Towns,Cities, Counties, etc.)

Hackers are a constant. Exploits, security holes and attack vectors  are changing daily giving hackers greater opportunities to break in. Every small and medium size business should be executing network vulnerability scans regularly, in addition to fortifying their cyber security posture in general (e.g. Anti Virus, security education, applying manufacturer software updates/patches, etc).

Hackers are targeting small and medium size businesses. Small and medium size businesses sometimes feel that they aren’t likely to be a target due to their size and that hackers couldn’t possibly be interested in what they do – but in reality the exact opposite is true. Hackers prey on the knowledge that small businesses tend to have lower defenses than larger organizations, usually due to lack of financial and human resources. By their very nature, thriving small businesses are innovative and niche, which again is very attractive to the bad guys who may be interested in customer data and intellectual property and know exactly how to pick out the weak targets. Burying your head in the sand may save money in the short term, but the cost of hacking could range from minor inconvenience, reputation damage, loss of customer data, fines and ultimately company closure.

There are a few prevailing “false narratives” that many small and medium size businesses dangerously believe.

• Many  believe that because they hired a company to install a website, install a network, install computers, install software that this magically makes them secure forever ( or that a third party company is somehow responsible for on going security without a contract that says so).
• Their in house IT technicians are performing proactive security issue discovery. Many technicians are very good at what they do, but to assume they have time/skill to perform proactive security technology auditing can be a dangerous assumption.

InfoTech Innovators offers internal and external network vulnerability scanning services that inspect the potential points of exploit on a computers, servers, or network to identify security holes. A vulnerability scan detects and classifies system weaknesses in computers, networks and communications equipment and predicts the effectiveness of countermeasures. Armed with the vulnerability report our service produces, a small business can then take steps to fortify their network security technology posture.

As referenced in this article on Forbes.com “More than half (55 percent) of the nearly 600 small- and medium-sized businesses surveyed by the Ponemon Institute reported being hit by a cyber attack in the past year, and 50 percent said they experienced a data breach involving customer and employee information over the same time period. It cost these companies an average of $879,582 in damage to or theft of IT assets and an average of $955,429 due to the disruption of operations, according to Ponemon’s “State of Cybersecurity in Small and Medium-Sized Business,” which was released in June 2016.”

Contact InfoTech Innovators today and learn how we can help !

November 10th, 2014
This article over on Search Health IT reported on 11/10/2014, that

CMS data from public records request reveals physicians, hospitals fail meaningful use audits with missing or shoddy HIPAA security analysis.

To the tune of $33M in EHR incentives recovered.

The audits cover meaningful use attestations going back to 2013. CMS plans to continue audits in 2015. Millions of dollars in federal incentive payments have already had to be returned by those who flunked, and more will likely have to be given back, up to an estimated total of $33 million according to an analysis of the CMS data posted as an infographic by consultant Health Security Solutions.

Two consultants and a lawyer interviewed for this story by SearchHealthIT said they believe nonexistent or shoddy self-assessments of how well doctors and healthcare organizations are protecting patient health information are the main reasons for a notably audit high failure rate among eligible practitioners (EPs). Meaningful use requires HIPAA security assessments, which forces the practitioner or hospital to identify and mitigate risks threatening the data contained on their networks.

Al Rozell from InfoTech Innovators stated:
“Very often in small to medium size practices ( and larger healthcare organizations on occasion) we are find unqualified personnel that try to do their own internal assessments. They fill out a questionnaire they downloaded, answer the questions, sometimes they note IT security gaps (sometimes not), etc.  HIPAA Security Risk Assessments need to be performed by qualified IT Security personnel with trained HIPAA security professionals and THAT is what InfoTech Innovators does. A complete Security Risk Assessment with a risk remediation strategy and a proposed execution plan is critical. If they have not done an adequate Security Risk Assessment, the answer is even more simple.. do one:) and start making HIPAA compliance an aspect of how you run your business and care for your patients.”

Mr Rozell added :
“Complaining about doing it doesn’t get it done. The cost of the HIPAA compliance related to hiring professionals, supplementing staff or training staff to execute assessments for you internally is a cost of doing business and that cost is considerably less than the punitive or other costs to your practice and/or reputation if HIPAA is ignored.“