Maximizing IT Efficiency with Deep Freeze in Healthcare Settings

Working in healthcare is often stressful. In many instances, healthcare professionals are dealing with literal life-or-death situations. Healthcare administrators and managers facilitate the critical work that doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists and other professionals do every day.

So, the stakes are high. On top of all of that, the last thing healthcare administrators want to worry about is their IT setup. Is it efficient enough? Is it secure enough? These types of questions are rarely top of mind for healthcare professionals, but the right IT solution can make a huge difference.

That’s why Faronics offers Deep Freeze to healthcare organizations.

What Is Deep Freeze?

If superheroes are real, then healthcare professionals must be superheroes. After all, they save lives — what could be more heroic than that? 

From an IT perspective, you can make your entire healthcare staff superheroes with Deep Freeze. That’s because Deep Freeze makes workstations indestructible. 

Deep Freeze can guarantee 100% workstation recovery upon restart. Whenever you restart a connected computer, it can automatically revert to a previously set state. Did a staff member mistakenly make a damaging alteration? Did a cybercriminal install malware? With Deep Freeze’s Reboot to Restore, it doesn’t matter; you start with a clean slate.

Deep Freeze offers protection for passwords, hard drives and partitions. It also prevents configuration drift. All these features can be key in healthcare settings.

What IT Issues Do Healthcare Organizations Face?

Healthcare organizations deal with a lot of information, and much of that information is sensitive personal data. This means their IT systems face serious challenges, including:

Data Breaches

Healthcare organizations must live with the constant fear of data breaches. No information can be more personal than one’s health, so unauthorized access to patient data is a huge concern. If a breach occurs, a healthcare institution or business will probably lose the public’s trust and face potential legal penalties.

Ransomware Attacks

If malicious actors successfully breach your system, they may encrypt critical systems or data. Their next step would be to demand payment to restore access. This puts your organization in a difficult spot, disrupting operations and patient care until you can resolve the situation.

Lack of Encryption

Data encryption is pretty much a must-have when dealing with the level of sensitive information that healthcare organizations work with. Insufficient encryption of data in transit or at rest exposes this sensitive information to potential theft. 

IoMT Security

The internet of medical things (IoMT) concerns devices such as pacemakers, insulin pumps and smart diagnostic tools. People’s lives depend on IoMT devices, but cybercriminals can exploit them if they’re not secured. 

Compliance

Healthcare organizations must comply with important regulations. These include HIPAA in the U.S. and GDPR in the EU interactions. Non-compliance can lead to fines, lawsuits and reputational damage.

Third-Party Vendor Vulnerabilities

Vendors that provide IT services or devices to healthcare groups often have vulnerabilities in their systems. The result can be indirect breaches. This illustrates the value of a solution such as Deep Freeze, which can save your organization’s workstations even if a breach compromises all the devices belonging to the third-party vendor.

BYOD/Remote Work Policies

Some healthcare companies and institutions have bring your own device (BYOD), remote or hybrid work policies. Allowing staff to use their own devices on various, possibly public, Wi-Fi networks can introduce vulnerabilities if not managed properly.

Lack of Education and Training

It takes a lot of education to be a healthcare professional, but that doesn’t necessarily include any schooling on IT and cybersecurity. Healthcare staff often lack the training to recognize and respond to cyber threats, such as phishing scams. One person clicking on a bad link in a phishing email can lead to disaster without a proper solution in place. It’s wise to give periodic briefings and training to staff to refresh their knowledge of cybersecurity best practices.

How Can Healthcare Organizations Maximize Efficiency?

Not having to worry about critical failures and cybersecurity threats can increase productivity on its own. But there are also things healthcare administrators can do to maximize the benefits of Deep Freeze. These include:

• Schedule updates: Cybercriminals continually refine and modify their tools and approaches, so it’s wise to always update your software to resist these increasingly sophisticated threats. You can set-up maintenance periods to install updates during off-peak hours to minimize disruptions. This ensures systems are up-to-date without hurting productivity.

• Check third-party applications: It’s important to ensure that all software and third-party applications your organization employs are compatible with Deep Freeze. Incompatibility can degrade system performance, operational stability and reliability. Regularly checking for compliance prevents these issues from causing problems.

• Use Deep Freeze Cloud: Integrating Deep Freeze Cloud enhances your administrative and management capabilities. This platform offers features such as centralized management and real-time system monitoring, giving you a comprehensive overview of your organization’s IT operations. 

Having the right IT solution in place can allow healthcare professionals to focus on what they do best — helping folks get healthy. Let Deep Freeze handle cybersecurity while your team handles healthcare.

To learn more about Deep Freeze, please reach out to our experts today.