Tag Archives: data breach security

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Healthcare Providers Need To Pick Up the Digital Pace

Healthcare providers have been more active than ever before. The global pandemic has prompted people to take their health more seriously. However, healthcare providers aren’t always ready to accept payments. They may not do well in keeping patient data safe and free from being stolen.

Many healthcare groups have outdated end-to-end payment platforms. Customers often have a tough time paying for their latest visits. They don’t understand the bills they earn, nor are the customers getting them in layouts they can support.

There’s also the worry that healthcare providers might not have secure data systems. These providers could lose their customers’ payment data if they aren’t cautious enough.

However, healthcare providers can improve how they operate if they look at what they’re doing to secure customer data. A healthcare team can review the needs customers have and make the necessary adjustments to make their work safer and more convenient. The result should be about ensuring all customers feel comfortable with what they are managing for their health.

Healthcare Providers – A Lack of Digital Work

The website PYMNTS conducted a survey of consumers on how well they can pay for their latest healthcare visits. At least 15 percent of the people surveyed had some difficulty in paying for their last visits. But while it was easy for many people to pay for general primary healthcare provider services, it was harder to pay for specialists. These include orthopedic and ear, nose, and throat specialists.

Healthcare providers in digital world

Difficulty Shopping

Customers also report that they have been struggling to find quality healthcare services. Customers want to be capable of shopping for healthcare services like how they would shop for anything else. They want solutions that are easy to find.

Protecting Data

There’s a general worry among patients that their sensitive bits of data might be lost or stolen. Patients are providing information on their finances and their most personal health needs. Patients will want to be assured the healthcare providers they contact are keeping their data safe. They want their contents to stay encrypted and sealed off from unauthorized parties. They also want all unnecessary bits of data on their health to be erased from their records as necessary. Customers will not want to support a business that doesn’t work with their best needs in mind.

Healthcare providers - Protecting Data

Accessibly Is a Must

Patients often have unique health worries that need to be addressed as soon as possible. But not all people have the ability to get to healthcare sites at certain times.

Teleconferencing may be best for some people, as they can communicate by video with a doctor about whatever issues they hold. The doctor can conduct business online at the patient’s convenience. The doctor won’t require an in-person visit unless there’s a significant concern the doctor wants to discuss with the patient.

Unique Things a Business Can Provide

A healthcare business could improve how it supports its customers by using a few points:

  • Telehealth support will be a necessity. Telehealth services have become critical during the pandemic, as some people prefer to visit their doctors from their homes. Healthcare sites must have the infrastructure ready to handle telehealth appointments.
  • Healthcare providers should include clear definitions of what they charge for services. They can list details on what they offer based on the rates available and what people can expect to spend for average visits. The effort clarifies details on what people might spend on things.
  • Digital check-in and check-out tools can help people review their charges. Some digital reports can be more accurate and easier to understand than traditional paper-based documents that healthcare sites might produce.
  • Support for digital wallets could also work. People have been using these wallets more often, as they facilitate faster payments.
  • Clear explanations on insurance policies will also be critical. A healthcare business can explain to customers what insurance policies it supports and how people can provide data on their plans.

It should not be tough for most businesses to provide these things to their clients. There’s a need for these healthcare sites to ensure everyone feels comfortable with what they will utilize. It becomes easier for those clients to refer a professional to others when they feel confident in what is available here.

Preventing Data Breaches

Data breaches are significant concerns for healthcare providers to note. But there are a few things that healthcare providers can do to keep such breaches from being prominent:

  • Any sensitive data that a healthcare provider holds should be destroyed as soon as the content is no longer necessary. Paper files can be shredded, while hard drives and other electronic items can be wiped clean.
  • All patient data must be separate from public information when moving online. A business can use separate networks for public and private needs. The proper information can move over the right networks without mixing anything up in the process. All employees will need information on what can work here.
  • All network systems should be kept up to date. Anything outdated may not be properly updated, plus they could be susceptible to various viruses and other outside attacks.
  • Encrypted programs can prevent data from being stolen or captured.
  • SSL protection will be critical for handling all payments. SSL systems can prevent unauthorized parties from entering a network.

Data breaches can be risky, especially considering how sensitive the details in a system can be. But data breaches can be prevented if a healthcare site does the right things and ensures the data won’t be stolen or put at risk of harm.

A Final Word

Healthcare providers can produce more positive relationships with their patients if they can manage their clients’ data well and have an easier time accepting payments. The pandemic has made people more reliant on these healthcare groups. It is high time that these companies start finding ways to ensure everyone stays safe and protected. The process of improving how the business operates is easier for groups to manage than they might expect.

The Future of PCI and Data Security

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Today The Official Merchant Services Blog marks the triumphant return to the timely topic of PCI DSS and cardholder data security. This tantalizing topic has been touted time and again in the peerless pages of our payment processing chronicles.

Days of Future Past

The crafty criminals that defraud, hack and swipe courageous consumers for their cardholder data are a constant concern for the entire credit card processing and data security sector. The industry has to be ever vigilant in its commitment to curb the high tech criminal activities and keep that cardholder data safe.

Retailers need to be eagle-eyed when it comes to defending data and securing customer information. They also need to be prepared for disaster, with a protocol-based plan of action for the worst case scenario — the dreaded data breach. But none of these advance preparations will save a merchant from data breach dangers if the merchant is unaware of PCI DSS, what it all means and what the requirements for PCI Compliance are.

The misdirection and misinformation out there about the process of PCI Compliance has led to complacency among many merchants. Face front true believers, we’ve even expressed the fantastic facts and figures to support merchant apathy regarding PCI Compliance in previous published purveyances of PCI related blogs.

The media gloms onto the gargantuan headlines of something as garish as a Global Payments data breach and the searing spotlight of data security dazzles the masses with the terrifying tidbits of these capricious crimes. But the nature of the crime has the danger spreading to small business merchants more and more frequently in the past few years. In fact, this article from Convenience Store Decisions, it is suggested that the heinous hackers and nefarious fraudsters are backing away from the big fish and targeting the smaller retailers with easier to breach defenses.

The CS Decisions scribe John Lofsock posits that one of the prime reasons for this shift can be pinpointed to an alteration in the criminals’ own dastardly demographics. Today’s hacker is becoming less the angst ridden, misunderstood teenager with whiz-bang keyboard and coding powers and turning into a far more treacherous group of villains. As the article puts it, “When hackers run up against businesses with sophisticated information technology and up-to-date security, they’ll turn to easier systems, including those of small non-profit agencies and family businesses.”

Datapocalypse Now

So what does a merchant do? The hale and hoary Host Merchant Services PCI Compliance pioneers readily suggest utilizing their very own PCI Compliance Initiative.  PCI Compliance is a fantastic foundation for top notch transaction security. The superlative standards and powerful protocols set up by the powers that be on the PCI-DSS Council are a forceful first step any enterprising merchant needs to take to protect their data. This is why helpful Host Merchant Services offers a power-packed PCI Compliance Initiative that gets merchants quickly and seamlessly up to speed.

Add to that amazing Initiative the second step that Merchants can take to shore up their security: Host Merchant Services Data Breach Security Program. Click that link to download a PDF explaining the value-added service HMS provides its merchants that goes above and beyond just simple PCI Compliance and helps ensure a merchant’s peace of mind. This program offers data breach insurance.

The article from CS Decisions quotes Trinette Huber, of Sinclair Oil Corp. in Salt Lake City as saying “as a merchant, I can go through all the steps to do this and do it in good faith, and yet if I have a breach — which is entirely possible — the PCI council will say I wasn’t literally compliant.”

This is where breach insurance comes into play true believers. The Data Breach Insurance that cutting edge and customer-oriented companies like Host Merchant Services offers can curb the pernicious penalties that merchants face when a breach occurs. As we’ve stated time and again here on The Official Merchant Services Blog, security only begins with PCI Compliance. It’s a never-ending battle for safety, justice and the power of payment processing. Merchant Services providers need to work in conjunction with merchants to stay out in front of any and all security issues. And even then, disaster can occur, so a solid data security plan will have backup protocols like data breach insurance.

The CS Decisions article also quotes Huber as saying that PCI “is asking thousands of merchants to do something (the credit card companies) should be doing themselves. They should be fixing the magnetic stripe (in credit/debit cards) so it’s not something that can be easily stolen, instead of asking merchants to fix (the security issues) for them.” 

That concern right there is why Visa has been pushing so hard for its EMV chip program with newer, more secure smartcards that have worked so well in Canada and Europe. Huber is noted in the article for describing the overbearing cost that the switch to EMV could entail for small business owners, as well as the fact that the EMV chips have been in place for decades and have already had data compromised before.

So if not EMV, Then What?

Will no canny crusader for competent credit card processing and dependable data transfer step up to take the challenge presented by the PCI DSS? John Lofsock, the audacious author of the article we’ve been analyzing, thinks that Point to Point Encryption (P2PE) might be the champion the industry needs. This tantalizing technology that is newer than EMV chips apparently ensures that credit card data is protected from the moment it is swiped all the way through to the nanosecond it arrives with the payment processor. This could curry favor with retailers because it completely eliminates the need for the retailer to secure cardholder data, as the retailer never has possession of said data.

The real boon, as noted by Lofsock, is that the P2PE method will make it much cheaper for merchants to be PCI Compliant by removing the need for merchants to deal with network segmentation and other costly and time-consuming parts of the compliance process like the audit.

It is noted that PCATS and PCI are preparing future standards that deal with P2PE so it is on their radar.

In the meantime, Host Merchant Services continues to offer the lowest PCI Compliance rates in the industry, as well as a vigorous PCI Compliance Initiative that seeks to inform and educate everyone interested as to the details of the process, step-by-step.