Intersect Healthcare Systems

The Information Challenge

Dealing with Complexity, a Data Explosion and Cybercrime

It used to be simple. Not too many years ago, the greatest challenge associated with storing health information was securing enough space to accomodate all of the file folders. In those days, electronic data volumes were modest in size, and only grew slowly. Digital activity was primarily related to billing and accounting tasks. Additionally, the operations of healthcare organizations, especially small, mid-tier and safety-net organizations were restricted to only a few locations. In those circumstances, the task of backing up data was less complex. In the event of an unplanned data outage, the impact to the organization may have been disruptive, but was tolerable - at least for a few hours. For high priority applications such as clinical apps, most organizations could tolerate unplanned downtime of short durations. And finally, regulations were minimal. Those were "the good old days."

Today, much has changed. Beginning with the transition from paper to electronic health records, the growth of digital data in healthcare organizations has multiplied exponentially. But, it hasn't just grown larger. Instead of just being concentrated on storage systems and ERP and EHR servers, it is on ADT servers, Radiology servers, Laboratory servers, Pharmacy servers, workstations, and countless others. It's in the cloud on Email servers, VOIP phone systems, and in some cases, EHR applications and remote patient monitoring systems.

The complexity associated with protecting this data is highly elevated because, for many organizations, they not only need to secure data at their primary site, but also at numerous remote clinics. Many organizations also have more than one in-patient facility. And finally, if these challenges weren't enough, highly organized and well-funded cybercriminals operating with impunity from off-shore locations are trying to either extort ransom money or steal your medical records to be sold on the "dark net". Because of their value and their criticality to your care delivery, healthcare records and the healthcare sector have become the target of choice for cybercriminal organizations. All the while, data privacy regulation has substantially increased bringing the potential for large penalties.

The Odds of Experiencing a Data Breach are Increasing

Natural disasters are still a threat, and ransomware is the leading challenge for today's healthcare organizations. In fact, Healthcare IT News reported that in a recent year, 75% of healthcare organizations reported being hit by ransomware during the year. In their 2019 study, the Ponemon Institute found that the percentage chance of experiencing a data breach is increasing.

In 2019 the percentage chance of experiencing a data breach within two years is 29.6 percent. That is an increase from 27.9 percent chance in 2018. Ponemon reported that in 2014, organizations had a 22.6 percent chance of experiencing a breach within two years. In the span of six years, the likelihood of experiencing a breach within two years grew by 7 percentage points, representing a 31% increase in the odds of experiencing a breach within 2 years. In other words, organizations today are nearly on-third more likely to experience a breach within two years than they were in 2014.

Completely eliminating the threat of cyber attacks, phishing, and ransomware is impossible, but being prepared is a vital, strategic imperative.

Life and Death

In a healthcare provider organization the concept of zero downtime for its IT systems isn't just a "nice to have" performance goal. Patient safety is at stake; it is a life and death matter. Between drug-drug allergies and medication orders, patient allergies and other treatment prodeedures, lack of access to patient information is are just some reasons why continuous access to patient information is an absolute requirement. Healthcare organizations that have suffered ransomware attacks without adequate recovery alternatives have found it necessary to halt new admissions, cancel scheduled proceedures, and transfer existing patients to other facilities. In addition to the costs associated with those activities, the additional costs attributable to the recovery for reinstalling and reconfiguring your systems could be substantial. Add in the amount paid in ransom and the cost would be prohibitive for many. Not considered is the loss of revenue and additional costs due to loss of reputation and confidence from patients and community members along with potential HIPAA penalties.

The 3-2-1-1-0 Rule

As a best practice, Veeam belives in the 3-2-1-1-0 rule. This rule means that you should:

Have at least 3 copies of your data
Stored on 2 different media
With one backup copy off site
Keeping 1 copy "air-gapped (or offline) to prevent it from being a victim of a ransomware attack
And ensure all recoverability solutions have 0 errors

In today's threat environment, a common occurance has been that ransomware victims have discovered avaialble backups couldn't be used to restore their systems. Backups were either also encrypted, or the backup system had been destroyed by the attackers.

To combat these threats, Intersect utilizes Veeam features to assure your organization's data is not only backed up, but able to restore to it's intended state.

For more information, please continue to browse our website.

Minimizing the Risks

Adopting an Effective Data Protection Strategy

Protecting your data is no longer an option or an afterthought. It is a strategic imperative that every organization must address, especially in healthcare. The difficulty that resource constrained healthcare organizations face, as was described above, is that effective solutions are complex to deploy and administer, and historically have been priced beyond the means of all but the most affuent organizations.

With a next-generation Veeam solution being utilized by more than 12,000 healthcare customers, Intersect addresses these challenges. With an affordable "as-a-service" offering delivering strong backup, recovery, and replication capabilities, data protection across single and multi-sites, analytics and visibility, Intersect ensures the reliability healthcare organizations depend on.

Enterprise Protection

Risk Management

Recovery Confidence

Guaranteed Availability

Intersect also offers an array of professional services designed to help you achieve the most value from your data.

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Continuious Availability for small, mid-tier and safety-net healthcare organizations

When recovery is instant, your organization is non-stop

Downtime

The hyper-criticality, the hyper-growth and the hyper sprawl of data are putting enormous pressure on organizations to ensure the Hyper-Availability of data. It's not enough to simply collect, store and protect data. You need a new approach to manage data intelligently so that it can proactively respond to the needs of the organization to ensure continuity, reduce risk and accelerate the innovation of new services that improve how you deliver patient care. Hyper-Availability is the new expectation for data in today's enterprise which allows faster reaction to times to any organizational need, multifold improvements in efficiencies and greater agility to shifts in patient demands.

Intersect's Veeam Hyper-Availability platform delivers the most complete solution to ensure that healthcare organizations close the Availability Gap and that their technology environment remains uninterupted.

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We enable healthcare organizations to deliver the experience users expecct by providing backup, recovery, replication and data protection for any workload be it on-premises or cloud.

Availability for ALL of your virtual, physical and cloud-based workloads. Instantly recover, any app, any data on any cloud.

Keep Data Safe

End-to-End Encryption

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To keep their data safe, users can use data encryption. Data encryption into an unreadable, scrambled format with the help of a cryptographic algorithm and a secret key. If encrypted data is intercepted, it cannot be unlocked and read by the eavesdropper. Only intended recipients who have the secret key can reverse encrypted information back to a readable format.

Advanced Replication

Advanced Replication Technologies

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Our replication features deliver: Fast and secure cloud-based disaster recovery as a service; Replication from backup files without impacting the production environment; Failover plans built for Orchestration that enable 1-click site failover; Planned failover tht facilitates data center migrations with zero data loss.

Backup & Business Continuity Solutions