Created by The Personal Computer Museum in Brantford, Ontario Canada, October 15, 2018 is National Clean Your Virtual Desktop Day. This nationally recognized day is of importance to professionals working in healthcare, as it affords us a reminder to follow HIPAA regulations. HIPAA includes the Minimum Necessary Requirement, a part of the Privacy Rule, which enforces that Protected Health Information (PHI) should not be used or…

October shares two holidays of horror: Halloween and National Cyber Security Awareness Month.   Unfortunately, not a week goes by without news feeds highlighting a recent breach, hack, security vulnerability, or controversy involving online activity compromise. The last decade has been an epidemic of data security breaches and security professionals believe the issues will continue to increase. “Cyber security is so vast, overall, and I think…

The purpose of World Password Day is to promote awareness regarding the importance of creating strong passwords and changing them often.  Fortunately or unfortunately we have user ids and passwords for just about everything (i.e. online banking, online shopping, retirement accounts, hospital or physician office medical records, email accounts, etc.).  The hype surrounding privacy and security is very prevalent with what seems like constant news reports…

News outlets are reporting another wave of ransomware attacks affecting computers within the last 24 hours: Spain, India, some parts of the United Kingdom and now parts of the United States including Merck & Co pharmaceutical giant. This attack is believed to have started in the Ukraine, and is called the Petya attack. Petya is a virus that encrypts files of your computer and holds them…