An Australian Medical Centre is reported to be considering paying a ransom demand after blackmailers broke into their organisations in house servers.  The criminal behaviour is said to ‘favour targeting smaller businesses likely to be heavy with valuable data but lack the resources to back it up as comprehensively as might a larger organisation’.

Here is a link to one of the articles

This has raised concern for specific types of businesses Australia Wide when customers begin to ask ‘how secure their data is’? when using in house desktop/ server/ database software.

We wanted to share with you some thoughts on data security because some lobby groups like to paint a picture that cloud/ online software are somehow at more risk than desktop/ server based software.  This is simply not true and the incident at Miami Family Medical Centre demonstrates that having your data base locally stored exposes a business to risk as the amount of effort in money, equipment and time needed to maintain enterprise/ corporate standard IT security is simply not affordable to most small to medium sized businesses.  As a result, data ransom and other data hackers see small business as a soft target.

However, companies like coreplus have invested in best of breed enterprise level infrastructure, systems, processes and security.  One of our brand values is to ensure we operate at a best practice level and therefore our security is bank level standard.  We won’t reveal publicly exactly how our architecture is laid out, however we can tell you that our data bases are not directly accessible to the internet and there are multiple layers of firewalls and security which ensure the highest standard of security.  Additionally we simulate hacking attempts through ethical testing based on the latest knowledge available pertaining to testing security and penetration vulnerabilities.

This is important to know as a user, because if you were using a traditional desktop/ server software you would have to invest in all the appropriate firewalls, layers, security software as well as actively manage the policies you’re adhering to.  Then you would have to engage a consultant to try and hack your systems to satisfy yourself that they are robust enough.  Mind you this is not a set and forget method, it needs to be repeated regularly as the hacking industry is always evolving.  Naturally, for a small business this would result in significant cost in money and time to do it properly.  With coreplus , you have outsourced that function and we take care of it for you for a very modest monthly subscription fee.  We’re able to amortise those costs across our network of users which means you’re getting the best of breed systems operated according to best practices in relation to security virtually in your monthly fee.

Dealing with Australian Medical Records we understand that information security is paramount, in any business, especially in health care. coreplus take this very seriously which is why we take every effort to ensure that our software is reliable and secure.

A few month back we posted a blog letting our customers know what security measures we have in place, and also offered our customers suggestions on how they can reduce the risks of security concerns.  Here is a link to the blog. Check this out and learn how you can change your user behaviour so your actions don’t cause any security breaches of your data.