Remote Work Challenges: How to Protect Your Clients’ Personal Health Information

The number of telecommuters has increased in 2021. It has become the age of telework and health care due to COVID-19. As a result, many companies face remote work challenges and do not know how to protect their clients` personal health information. Employers can save reputation and a lot of money if they are aware of ever-evolving technology and HIPAA compliance.

Distance Work Risks

For example, IBM Security reports about data breaches that cost at least 3 million dollars and took an average of 280 days to detect and contain. Customers’ PII (personally identifiable information) was the most frequently compromised type of data. It cost about $150 per record. Detection and escalation, lost business, notification, and ex-post response are widespread causes of such breaches.

During the pandemic, the amounts of data breaches are likely to be much higher and they would increase their cost. IBM Security stated that the average total cost of a data breach by nearly $137,000 because of a remote workforce increase. Similarly, IBM Security X-Force (specialized threat intelligence team) discovered that ransomware was the most common threat type in 2020. It represented 23 percent of security events such as data theft or server access. Moreover, X-Force saw an increase in cyber-attacks from 2019 to 2020.

Remote Work Challenges

Ways to Deal with Remote Work Challenges

Hospitals and healthcare organizations start taking measures to protect patients and ensure HIPAA compliance on all levels. There are some steps for you and your employees to stay HIPAA compliant during working remotely. So, you can:

  • Create training programs;
  • Provide devices to employees for professional use;
  • Regularly monitor platforms used by employees;
  • Require employees to use a VPN;
  • Provide devices to employees for professional use.

If you educate your employees on how to maintain HIPAA compliance in a remote work environment, they will avoid a lot of risks and troubles. Regular platform monitoring ensures that all technology is protected by HIPAA-compliant encryption. Above all, you need to have employees` devices configured for network discovery by your IT department. VPN (a virtual private network) protects the data they may interact with when accessing a network.

These steps may help your organization maintain full HIPAA compliance, no matter where the majority of employees work during the day. We hope our post will help you to safeguard your organization from HIPAA violations.

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