When it comes to exposing personal data of patients and consumers, the government isn’t fooling around. Recently, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary was fined $1.5 million dollars for losing a single laptop exposing 3,621 patient records. Additional HIPPA violations also contributed to the large fine.
In another case, a non-profit hospice in Idaho lost a laptop containing sensitive personal information about 441 patients resulting in a fine of $50,000, not a small price to pay for a non-profit. This also marked the first such penalty involving fewer than 500 data breach victims.
And, it’s not just healthcare that’s being affected. A restaurant management company was the first to be fined under the Massachusetts Data Privacy Law. The group was fined $110,000 for exposing customer’s credit card data due to a malicious code installed on their systems. The restaurant continued to accept credit cards after learning of the breach. Another lost laptop cost a small Massachusetts company $15,000.
Are you protecting your business’ data and devices against intrusion or exposure? If you’re not sure, ask yourself...
1 Comment There are several misconceptions about hosting servers in “The Cloud”, the primary of which I’ve discovered; “If my server is in the cloud - it is automatically protected from failure - because cloud provides for High Availability.”
What most do not realize is that there two main types of High Availability, or HA. There is Hardware HA and Application HA. Hardware HA implies that an application or a service, such as a database, e-mail, or a line of business application, is protected from hardware failure of an individual server or host. This is the type of HA that hosting a virtual machine in the public cloud provides, as public cloud platforms feature multiple hosts attached to redundant storage arrays and redundant networks.
Clustering
Just as you need multiple hardware servers to provide redundancy against physical failure, multiple application servers are required to provide redundancy (high availability, resiliency) against software failure. To achieve that, we have clustering. What is a cluster? In simple terms, a cluster is a group of independent systems working together as one to provide a highly available service or application. If a...
0 Comments Warranties on computers have always been important in any IT environment but the question has always been; what kind of warranty makes the most sense? This is not an easy question to answer as it will vary depending on the hardware that you are using and the availability of an IT services staff. The biggest question is if you should get onsite service or not since warranty does not cover software or operating system issues. In order to answer this question there are a few things to take into consideration.
Hardware failures on employee workstations can be costly due to loss of productivity. You will want to get the employee’s pc up and running again as quickly as possible. The big question to consider is; do you have quick access to an IT internal staff, outsourced IT staff, or even someone knowledgeable enough to replace parts in a piece of equipment? Remember that even if someone in house has enough knowledge to work on pc hardware, are they comfortable with laptops, screens, motherboards, and processors? There are many different components that could fail and not all of them are easy to install. If you do not have someone in house...
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