5 Things You Should do to Protect Your Practice

No one likes to think about bad things happening to them, much less plan for them.

September is National Disaster Preparedness Month, so we want to give you an outline on some simple things you can (and should) be doing to protect your practice.

1. Review Your Practice's Insurance Carefully

   Most practices carry some type of general liability insurance that would pay them if their building and the things in it were damaged.

   However, many practice's do not have enough coverage to replace all the computer equipment and devices, desks, supplies and other things they've accumulated over the years that are housed in their office.

   Make sure you review your policy every year and keep in mind new additions and assets you've accumulated during that year.

2. Consider Cloud Computing

   One of the biggest advantages of Cloud Computing is that your data and assets are stored off-site in a highly secure, high-available data center, with fail over and redundancy built in.

   That means that if your building were destroyed and you had to evaluate, or if your server melted down due to an unexpected hardware failure, everything you've worked so hard to create over the years in safe and not a sitting duck in your unsecured closet or server room.

3. Secure Your Data

   Making sure that your data is protected from theft is a never-ending battle you don't want to lose. Companies get hacked and expose sensitive client and employee data can face severe penalties, lawsuits and massive loss of credibility in the marketplace.

   Make sure you never have to send an e-mail to your customer explaining the bad news that a hacker accessed their info through you.

   Further, if you keep any sensitive information (even passwords to portals containing sensitive information) on portable laptops, phones and other devices, make sure you have a way of controlling and safeguarding that information.

4. Write a Simple Disaster Recovery Plan

   The key word here is "simple." If you plan gets too complicated or difficult, you won't do it. At a minimum, think of the disaster that is most likely to happen and that would have a severe and negative impact on your company's survival.

5. Review Your Employee Internet Policy

   With so many people "addicted" to Facebook or Twitter, it's important that your employees know where the line is in what they can and can't post online.

   We also recommend content-filtering software to block content and websites you don't want employees visiting during working hours. Contact us to learn more about how we help our clients manage content filtering.

Contact us during the month of September and we'll give you a complementary Disaster Recovery Practice Assessment.