The American Health Information Management Association(AHIMA), a professional association for health professionals involved in health information management, recently released 16 steps to creating a plan for cybersecurity attacks. They are listed below:

Conduct a risk analysis of all applications and systems. Any and all information, applications and systems stored by your healthcare organization could be compromised and must be addressed by your cybersecurity risk assessment.

Recognize record retention as a cybersecurity issue.

Patch vulnerable systems.

Deploy advanced security endpoint solutions that provide more effective protections than standard antivirus tools.

1. Encrypt any work stations, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and portable media and backup tapes.

Improve identity and access management. Policies to achieve this could include password standards, locking users out of systems after failed login attempts, using two factor authentication, restricting concurrent logins, implementing time-of-day restrictions and education.

Refine web filtering (block bad traffic).

1. Implement mobile device management.

Develop an incident response capability. You can do this by creating cybersecurity attack plans, educating a data breach plan and conducting drills.

1. Monitor audit logs to selected systems (you could outsource this task).

Leverage existing security tools like Intrusion Prevention/Detection Systems.

1. Evaluate current and potential business associates (per the HIPAA Security Rule).

Improve tools and conduct an internal phishing campaign to teach employees what “red flags” are in emails.

1. Have an outside cybersecurity firm execute technical and non-technical evaluations.

Apply a ‘Defense is Depth’ strategy. Review access control protocols, evaluate security policies to make sure they incorporate current cybersecurity best practices, review audit logs regularly, consider your healthcare entity’s cybersecurity attack response capabilities and conduct desktop drills.

1. Detect and prevent intrusion. Monitor your hospital network for nefarious activities with anomaly detection or signature-based methods. Intrusion detection systems can make reports and give trends that could indicate a cybersecurity attack or breach.