‘Ransomware’ Presents A Growing Threat To Your Practice

• More than 70% of Ransomware attacks target small businesses.¹
• Ransomware hit 33% small-to-medium businesses worldwide last year.¹
• As much as 60% of hacked small and medium-sized businesses go out of business after six months.¹

What is Ransomware?

Ransomware is a malicious software that usually enters through an email link or attachment containing the virus designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid.

There are two types of Ransomware:

1. Encrypting Ransomware: The attacker encrypts your data, locking down your software’s ability to display the information needed for a patient visit and demands a ransom for the hijacked files.

2. Locker Ransomware: Some attackers lock you out of your operating system making it impossible to access files and applications until a ransom is paid.
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Effects of a Ransomware Attack:

Financial Impact:

• You may lose your practice. Ransomware shuts down 1 in 5 small businesses after it hits.²
• You may lose money paying a ransom for your data with no guarantee you will even get it back. Cyber attacks cost small businesses between $84,000 and $148,000³ and only 19% of ransomware victims who pay the ransom actually get their files back.⁴
• If you’re fortunate enough to not lose your practice after a Ransomware attack, you still might lose a substantial amount of your revenue. 29% of businesses that were breached lost revenue; 38 percent of those lost more than 20 percent of their revenues.⁵
• You will have to pay fines for violating HIPAA requirements.
• On average, small businesses lost over $100,000 per ransomware incident due to downtime. For one in six organizations, these attacks caused 25 hours or more of downtime.⁶

Damaged Reputation:

• You will be featured on the HHS website HIPAA wall of shame.
• You will have to notify your patients and the media of the breach.
• 22% of businesses that suffered a cyber attack lost customers; 40% of those lost more than 20 percent of their customers.⁵

The threat is real, patient data security is absolute. A data breach could ruin your practice and force you to close. In September 2018, The Department of Health and Human Services gave notices to business & healthcare providers. All the ransomware reports were for healthcare providers, and over 41% of all patient records compromised were Ransomware related.⁷

The good news: Blocking attacks doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive.

96% of companies with a trusted backup and disaster recovery plan were able to survive ransomware attacks.⁸

Central Data Storage (CDS) can help protect your data and reputation against ransomware. CDS’ managed backup and disaster recovery solution, UnisonBDR, continuously runs online backups of your data so you can avoid paying a ransom to get your files back.

The best part is you don’t have to worry about restoring your files yourself. CDS has over 10 years of experience backing-up and restoring dental practice data throughout the US and Canada. Our expert team understands your restore needs. We know DIY (do-it-yourself) restore solutions sound nice in theory, but become complicated fast when you add in patient management software and dental equipment data. Our promise to customers is that we will restore lost or damaged data in 24 hours or less at no additional cost.

“After Ransomware was detected on our server, the team at Central Data Storage found our data from before the attack and got us restored quickly. I would recommend the professionals at Central Data Storage to anyone looking for a backup solution with great technical support at a reasonable price”.
           – Dr. C, Tampa, FL

A Special Offer for Open Dental Customers

We have teamed up with Open Dental, and want to help keep your dental practice and patient data backed up, secure, and 100% HIPAA Compliant. We are offering all Open Dental customers special pricing and your first month completely free!

Start preparing for the unexpected. Learn more about Central Data Storage disaster recovery solution today!

1. https://www.inc.com
2. https://www.malwarebytes.com/pdf/white-papers/SecondAnnualStateofRansomwareReport-USA.pdf
3. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/21/cybersecurity-small-business-thwarting-hackers-obama-cameron
4. http://cyber-edge.com/cdr
5. http://b2me.cisco.com/en-us-annual-cybersecurity-report-2017
6. https://money.cnn.com/2017/07/27/technology/business/ransomware-malwarebytes/index.html
7. https://ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/breach/breach_report.jsf
8. https://phoenixnap.com/blog/disaster-recovery-statistics