Recently, a major technology outage occurred due to flawed code from the prominent U.S. software security vendor, CrowdStrike, causing millions of Windows operating systems to crash resulting in significant business disruptions worldwide that included grounding thousands of flights at major airports, knocking a number of banks and more than 12 hospital systems offline impacting patients and payments and kicking media outlets off air limiting their ability to broadcast for hours.

Although CrowdStrike is not a software vendor in Medicus IT’s security solution stack, these disruptions caused mass challenges throughout the globe.  The widespread impact of this outage reflects CrowdStrike’s dominance. Over half of Fortune 500 companies and many government bodies such as the top U.S. cybersecurity agency itself, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, use the company’s software.

The massive scale of this incident underscores the critical importance of your businesses having robust contingency plans in place to protect operations and ensure business continuity.

As the nation’s top Healthcare Solutions Providers (HSP), we strongly urge all our clients to review and reinforce the following essential safeguards to protect not only your business operations but also the well-being and safety of your patients, who rely on your services for critical care and support.

While this wasn’t a cyber security incident, it is a good opportunity to review your business continuity and insurance coverages to ensure that you can limit the impact ot your organization.  Without a plan to resume operations, restore data and recover financially, your healthcare organization could suffer significant losses. A few critical actions to consider:

Operational Downtime Plan:

• • Do you have a non-technical operational downtime plan in place that your frontline workers know how to navigate when you don’t have access to your EHR or other critical technology platforms?
  • Develop and regularly update a comprehensive downtime plan outlining procedures to follow in an IT outage. This plan should include communication protocols, roles and responsibilities, and steps to mitigate operational disruptions

Backup, Disaster Recovery, & Business Continuity Plan:

• • Not all backups are created equally.  Do you know how long you could be down if you’re forced to restore from backups; what is your recovery time objective, & how much data could you lose based on time between backup points?
  • Ensure that all critical data is backed up regularly and stored securely. Implement a disaster recovery plan that allows rapid restoration of systems and data in an outage. Regularly test your backup and recovery processes to confirm their effectiveness.

Insurance Coverage – 2 Types:

• • Business interruption insurance: Verify that your business insurance policy includes coverage for business interruption and potential cash flow issues resulting from extended periods of being offline. This financial safety net can help mitigate the impact of lost revenue and operational disruptions.
  • Cybersecurity/ Cyber Liability insurance: Verify that your business insurance includes policies that can help recover from the financial costs of a cyberattack or data breach. Important to check for language around:
    1. Operational disruption: Business-critical activities and customer services may be disrupted, leading to loss of revenue.
    2. Data recovery: Cyber policies can help organizations manage the cost of restoring data or other assets.

Proactive planning and preparation are vital to minimizing the risks associated with IT outages. We are here to assist you in reviewing your current plans and implementing any necessary improvements to enhance your resilience against future incidents.

Current client?  If you have any questions or need support in strengthening your downtime plan, backup and disaster recovery strategies, or insurance coverage, please do not hesitate to contact us. Our Client Success Managers, along with our team of Virtual Technology Executives are ready to assist.

Interested in learning how a Healthcare Solutions Providers (HSP) like Medicus can help you navigate a similar situation? Take the first step and contact us for a consultation with one of our Healthcare Transformational Consultants