Improving health care IT security with Deep Freeze Enterprise

It seems as though, by now, every organization would understand the risks they face when it comes to malware and cybercrime. Industries that deal with a lot of highly sensitive personal information like financial services and health care should be especially careful to take the necessary precautions to protect customer data. But according to a new survey conducted by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, this simply isn’t the case.

The study found that two-thirds of health care organizations reported experiencing a significant security incident recently. The survey, which gathered responses from nearly 300 participants responsible for information security in some capacity, found that an average of 11 different technologies are being used to protect personal data. Most of these defense tools were traditional solutions – anti-virus software, encryption, firewalls, etc. – but more advanced strategies were also being employed such as multi-factor authentication and dynamic biometric technologies.

A majority of respondents – 87 percent – said that information security has become an increasing important business priority over the last 12 months, leading to an improved security posture and stronger network security capabilities. However, looking at the work done in individual sections of cybersecurity, participants were less confident in their ability to protect critical IT assets. According to the report, only 12 percent of organizations had conducted a mock cyber defense exercise to test their networks’ capabilities. Just 20 percent of respondents said they felt they would be able to deal with a negligent or malicious insider and even fewer, 17 percent, believed they could handle the effects of a zero-day attack. Perhaps most telling, 42 percent of participants said that there were simply too many new and emerging threats to stay ahead of cybercriminals.

“Respondents noted that today’s security tools are not going to be sufficient to protect the industry against the types of security threats their organizations expect to face in the future,” the report read. “Indeed, respondents were widely likely to indicate that more innovative and advanced tools are required to secure their environments in the future.”

Enhance health care IT security with Deep Freeze
Clearly, health care organizations are in need of modern, sophisticated security solutions to keep sensitive data safe from cybercriminals and other threats.There are a variety of solutions that claim to support the health of medical IT systems, but few of them are able to ensure the uptime and protection provided by Faronics’ Deep Freeze Enterprise.

Deep Freeze helps to protect computers from viruses, zero-day threats and phishing schemes to keep endpoints safe from malicious actors. In particular, Deep Freeze offers an easy-to-use Reboot to Restore feature that allows IT administrators to retain the prior configuration of their devices before a virus or other malicious program appeared. This is also beneficial to organizations relying on older machines and operating systems that may no longer receive support from the manufacturer. Deep Freeze offers benefits to organizations that rely on public access computers (a single system accessed by multiple users). Such systems are prone to critical data loss and non-compliance with standards like HIPAA or PCI-DSS, but Deep Freeze provinces an unobtrusive yet secure environment that meets regulatory requirements.