IT Support Myths to reconsider
You have seen how fast technology continues to evolve and how hard it can be to keep up with at your practice. If you have been doing most of the heavy lifting yourself with some occasional help, then you may or may not be aware of all the changes in the IT industry.
After all, you are running a Dental practice.
The fast pace of advancement in technology has created some common myths along the way, particularly when it comes to cybersecurity and Dental IT support.
MYTH #1: Managed IT Security is too Expensive
Dental technology is an investment that you should protect to ensure the security of your patient’s trust and personal information. If you are currently managing IT support in-house through various team members, then it’s an expense you are already paying – whether you realize it or not.
Most of the time in-house IT support is tasked to the doctor or the office manager. We have found neither of the two, typically, has the knowledge to do this well, and this results in a major disruption to their primary work roles when problems occur.
This also leaves the practice completely vulnerable to an attack.
We specialize in protecting your practice and making sure that your systems run effectively and securely. This gives you and your team back the time to serve new and current patients.
What is the cost of a breach?
Well, you have to notify all patients of the breach, so reputation risk could cost you many customers. How hard do you work to add more patients today?
Ransom demands typically average around $60k for a 5 operatory practice attack that leaves you out of commission.
Non-compliance penalties can be up to $1.0m for negligence. ( PHIPA legislation )
Lost wages and productivity – usually this is the smallest expense associated with a breach.
If you add the above items together and you can estimate how much a breach could cost.
If you are not willing to take this risk and want to know how secure your practice is currently, we’re happy to give you sanity check on your practice’s cybersecurity and provide feedback.
MYTH #2: My Old Technology Works, So It's Good Enough
When your equipment reaches four years old, it is time to look at an upgrade. Even if your equipment appears to be working adequately, we have found that after 5 years technology does not work the same as it once did. It’s general industry knowledge that around this time equipment starts to fail, causing you to invest in fixes and repairs.
With PC suppliers continuously upgrading equipment and software vendors releasing more capability with their products, it’s strategic to plan to upgrade your equipment around year four. Planning and preparing to upgrade to new equipment will minimize practice downtime and can be scheduled at convenient time for you.
Just as Zero Trust solutions used to be unavailable and very unaffordable, new products come along that are transformational and make life better for you. You need an expert who can walk you through the new offerings and help you make an informed decision on new technology
MYTH #3: IT Isn't That Important To My Dental Practice
If you have the internet, computers, printers, imaging equipment, then IT is very important to you and your dental practice. Whether you are tech-savvy or not, you should make IT a top priority, especially since dental practices are a target of cyber-criminals.
While it is possible to run your practice without IT, there are very few who don’t and there are good reasons why you invested all the money on it in the first place.
Hackers know that many practices are not using the best security practices and they go after firms that have money, face compliance penalties and are relatively easy to hack. This makes you very valuable to a hacker.
If your printer goes down, you likely you can find a workaround until it’s up and running again. If you get hit with a ransomware attack leaving your practice inoperable, the cost adds up very quickly.
MYTH #4: I Don’t Need Proactive IT Support, We Have Very Few Problems, So We’re Good
There are many benefits to having your Dental IT support proactively managed. Managed services is a term used to describe a suit of services that support your IT infrastructure.
This list includes keeping your systems up to date on software patches, monitoring the health of each device and firewall, making sure your backups run and are tested.
We do this without interrupting your work, we provide remote support and onsite support at no additional cost, and monitor the health of your network so that any problems that develop can be addressed, often before you even know.
We also provide a suite of threat hunting tools and compliance training in addition to a bundled Zero Trust security offering. All of this together keeps you compliant with PHIPA legislation and secures your environment.
If you add up what you are paying your staff to fix problems, plus your own time, plus the cost of paying outside support when something goes wrong, plus the drag on your operations and the high risk of breaches and extortion, we believe there is no cost difference and the price of managed service is money well spent.
Keep in mind that change is inevitable and can be very good especially when it comes with additional benefits. If you want to learn more about how we would support you individually please reach out.
MYTH #5: Buying Your Own Equipment Will Save You Money
This is very rarely true. If your time is not worth anything and you know the difference between all the brands and their strengths and weaknesses, and you have a good source, you may be able to get the same pricing that a we offer.
The brands we choose have been thoroughly vetted and are chosen to work with dental equipment. The equipment you buy may or may not be equivalent and will likely take longer to prep.
It is tempting to source your own IT equipment because often a purchase can be a big-ticket item. There is nothing wrong with looking around, but we caution against sourcing Dental IT equipment yourself.
Save yourself the hassle and let us do the equipment shopping.
Myth #6 All IT Service Providers Are The Same.
My current company is serving me OK, they have a few hiccups here and there, but overall, they seem to be doing fine.
You likely feel this way due to 2 things:
- You haven’t been victim of an attack yet
- Changing over to someone else brings unknowns.
We know that you are not shy about spending money on new technology to boost your practice’s operations. From Xray, Intraoral imaging, practice management software, marketing programs, fixtures and so on. You have invested heavily building your practice.
5 years ago, the chances of you being victimized by a hacker were less than 15%, today its over 60%.
5 years ago, adequate security looked like an Antivirus program and a firewall.
Today, that approach is considered negligence on the part of the practice and the IT service provider.
One breach can literally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars
If your current provider can’t tell you how they would protect you against fileless malware, exploits that target legitimate software tools, impersonation attacks, USB attacks, its time to look at a company who will.
When we engage with you as a customer and partner, we use a complete onboarding program that maps out all of your infrastructure, software, workflow and user knowledge, making the transition painless and complete.
Look for a partner who knows Dental IT, has the security tools and know how to keep you safe, responds quickly, and fixes problems the first time.