When the City of Atlanta was cyberattacked, the hackers demanded $50,000 to restore the city’s networks but that wasn’t the only casualty. The cost to fix the system is $2.7 million and crosses over multiple security firms and various departments across the city. If hackers breached your network, what could ransomware attacks cost your practice?
It’s not simply the cost paid to the hackers to release the system back to your IT team.
Cost of downtime for your medical practice impacts the bottom line. That, in turn, can mean making tough choices about upgrading equipment, expanding the practice, and the hiring and firing of employees. After an attack, it becomes vital to have an IT team fix and upgrade systems as well as manage them post-attack.
For the City of Atlanta, they had signed contracts with a number of security firms which post-attack had to be reviewed, vetted, and managed. Based on our experience, we imagine this process alone took effort to sort out while at the same time protecting the city’s assets and rebuilding the broken networks. That is a lot to handle all at once!
There are monetary costs but there is also a privacy issue, especially for medical practices and legal firms, who have confidential patient or client information.
In the case of medical practices, there is a risk that a security breach not only means informing patients that their personal information may be in the hands of hackers but could also be the violation of HIPPA privacy laws. Patients would be well within their rights to explore filing a complaint with OCR, the Office for Civil Rights. After an investigation, if found guilty, the medical practice can take corrective action and agree to a settlement.
Not only is it the time and stress of an investigation, but ultimately ransomware attacks cost your practice in money and resources.
For law firms whose networks may be at-risk of ransomware attack, there is a danger that confidential client and/or case information could get in the wrong hands. Whether it is a big case like the Bill Cosby trial or a smaller one, protecting client information is important.
Rather than wondering if your firm is at risk for ransomware attacks, call IT Ninjas. Our team is dedicated to keeping your medical practice, law firm, and Gilbert business safe from hackers.
