October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, a yearly campaign to promote the importance of online safety. To commemorate the month, the ABELDent team wants to ensure your team is proactively taking steps to safeguard your practice’s data.
In 2022, The World Economic Forum found that 95% of cyber security incidents are caused directly by human error, a figure which was detailed in their annual Global Risks Report. This concerningly high number indicates that many successful cyberattacks are due to staff/team members of organizations unknowingly falling into traps laid out with malicious intent. Some examples can include clicking a link in an email or text that appears to be from a legitimate source (phishing) or being tricked over the phone to give up sensitive information that could put your practice at risk (vishing).
Artificial intelligence (AI) is also continuing to provide hackers with additional tools to make their plans more likely to succeed. With the optimization of technology such as visual and auditory deepfakes, falling victim to cyberattacks is more likely than you may think.
Healthcare data is often a prime target for hackers. While credit card numbers can be changed and bank accounts can be frozen, Protected Health Information (PHI) is sought after for its longevity, often being instrumental in crimes such as medical fraud and identity theft. This means that dental practices must take every precaution to remain protected against cyberattacks and bad actors in an increasingly digital world.
In this blog post, we describe four keys to helping you secure your practice data.
Table of Contents
- Routine Cyber Security Awareness Training
- Updating Your Software and Operating Systems Regularly
- Enforcing Strong Passwords and Regular Password Changes
- Regular Off-Site Backups (e.g. Cloud Backups)
Maintain Routine Cyber Security Awareness Training
When it comes to cyber security, your individual team members are the first line of defense. As mentioned above, 95% of cyber security incidents are caused by human error. Ensuring your staff is adequately trained to spot suspicious emails, links, phone calls, and behavior puts you a step ahead of hackers. Moreover, being trained to recognize the most recent scams and phishing techniques can help your team members avoid potential cyberattack attempts and prevent a problem before it has a chance to unfold.
Routine training is important because of the ever-evolving nature of online threats. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used to enhance your practice’s productivity and protect your data, hackers can also utilize AI to sabotage your practice. Ensuring your team members know what to look out for, especially with newer technologies, is one of the most effective ways to remain protected.
Keep your Software and Operating System Updated
Using an outdated software or operating system that is either no longer supported by the developer or is several updates behind puts your practice at unnecessary risk of falling victim to a cyberattack. As mentioned above, cyber security threats are ever evolving and oftentimes are being implemented with Artificial Intelligence (AI), meaning that attacks are quicker and more frequent than in the past. Software developers are consistently updating software with advanced security patches to protect users’ data from exploits that hackers can pinpoint more easily as software becomes older. This is why regularly updating your software as soon as new updates are available is crucial for keeping your practice data as secure as possible. For instance, if your practice is currently using a version of ABELDent that predates version 15, you are actively missing out on new security features and patches that help protect your data.
Similar to using outdated software, using an old operating system, (especially one that is no longer supported by a developer), means your practice is missing out on important security features and updates that are implemented in newer versions.
If your practice is still using Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system, it is a great time to plan your update. On October 14, 2025, Microsoft will no longer be supporting Windows 10, which means that any of your computers running Windows 10 will no longer receive updates to heighten security. While your computers running Windows 10 will likely continue to work after October 14, it is a best practice to update to a supported version of Windows to remain protected as new security features and updates become available.
Enforce Strong Passwords and Regular Password Changes
Following basic ‘cyber hygiene’ protocols can have a substantial impact when it comes to safeguarding your practice data. One such example is enforcing strong passwords among your team members. ABELDent helps you manage your team members’ passwords through the Authorization Manager to minimize any potential weak points when it comes to password security.
In addition to helping you enforce strong passwords among team members, ABELDent limits the number of password entry attempts before a user is locked out for a period of time. A team member with Administrator privileges in ABELDent can allow the user to reset their locked password. This security feature is a strong deterrent to a hacker attempting to gain access to your system using the “brute force method”, where the hacker enters as many potential passwords as possible to gain entry into an account. If a team member forgets their password, they can select the “Forgot Password” button on the ABELDent login screen to reset their password securely without being locked out.
What entails a strong password?
- Passwords that are changed on a regular basis (e.g. 90-day intervals)
- Passwords that are recently changed should be quite different from the previous password. For example, any words or number patterns that were used in the previous password should not be reused. If a hacker knows a previously used password, they can compromise accounts more easily by trying passwords that follow a similar pattern to the previous one.
- Passwords that are long and complicated (e.g. a minimum of ideally 12+ characters) and incorporate special characters, numbers, and a mix of upper- and lower-case letters.
Passwords should never be written down and kept in a location close to a computer. Additionally, passwords should never be stored on your computer’s desktop in a Notepads or Word document. If your team members have several passwords to remember, a password manager tool can help you to keep track of different passwords. Passphrases are also a common solution to both remembering passwords while ensuring passwords are long and complicated, and therefore harder to guess.
Some other best practices when it comes to passwords include:
- Enabling Two-Factor Authentication when available (e.g. these are common for financial institutions, social media accounts, email accounts, and other administrative accounts). Two-Factor Authentication helps you protect all facets of your practice, not just your practice data. This also prevents the brute force method, protecting your account from being accessed by outsiders.
- Using different passwords for all logins where possible – any team member reusing the same login information can put your practice in a vulnerable position. Encourage team members to use different passwords/passphrases for different accounts where possible to minimize risk.
ABELDent’s system security features offer a baseline for enforcing strong passwords among team members. It is still crucial that team members understand the importance of maintaining good ‘cyber hygiene’ to limit points of entry for hackers who seek out your practice data.
Utilize Remote Backups for your Practice Data
Backing up your practice data is crucially important, and opting to back up your data off-site is an even safer choice. While the focus of this blog is cybersecurity and the threat that rapidly evolving technologies pose to dental practices, environmental events such as flood and fire can also harm your practice data. Even physical events such as break-ins and theft of physical devices can result in your practice data being stolen or compromised. Of course, falling victim to a cyberattack, such as ransomware or malware, is also a major incident that could jeopardize your practice data.
ABELDent Remote Backup and Recovery Service (RBR) is a backup service that helps lock down your practice data in the event of a physical or cyber security-related event. ABELDent RBR also helps you get your practice back up and running as soon as possible with a working copy of your practice data to prevent unwanted downtime and revenue loss.
ABELDent’s patented back-up process helps your practice get back on its feet in the event of the worst-case scenario. ABELDent RBR ensures a copy of your backed up practice data is stored off-site in a secure Microsoft Azure Cloud server in case of any event that would cause disruptions and downtime.
How does ABELDent RBR Work?
Every night, ABELDent RBR automatically encrypts and transmits your practice data to a secure server on the Microsoft Azure cloud. In the morning, your office receives an email summary of the daily backup. If your practice ever encounters a problem that prevents you from accessing your data, you have a recent copy in the cloud that you can restore from.
If your practice faces a cyberattack or a physical setback, ABELDent will provide you with a temporary virtual server to get you operational as quickly as possible, when there is no other better and faster option available. Additionally, if you change your server, ABELDent RBR’s patented process identifies the new server and notifies you to adjust your backup, accordingly, ensuring your most recent data is securely backed up. With ABELDent RBR, you can access your backed up data whenever you need it, and the retention schedule preserves your backed up data for up to one year.
This Cyber Security Awareness Month, ensure your practice takes every precaution to secure your valuable data. Routine cyber security awareness training, regular software and operating system updates, and strong passwords are all important measures that your practice must take to ensure your practice data is as safe as possible. Having a contingency plan in place by backing up your data remotely (by using a service such as ABELDent RBR) is also an important precaution to take to ensure your practice has all your bases covered, aside from regular IT protocol such as firewall and antivirus tools.
If you have any questions about your practice’s cyber security, ABELDent RBR, or if you are curious about updating your software to ABELDent’s latest version (v15), please contact our team here or call us at 1-800-267-ABEL (2235) to speak to one of our team members.
