One of the essential services that is needed in a dental office is patch management. From fixing security vulnerabilities to improving performance, patch management keeps all vital network-oriented software up to date, reducing downtime by scheduling patching for off-hours.
Benefits of Automated Patch Management
In a busy dental practice, patching is often the first thing to be “put off”. However, in a HIPAA complaint practice, all vulnerable software must be up to date with the latest security patching – software that has not been patched for over 30 days is considered non-compliant. The software in question includes Windows security updates, as well as security fixes for Office, Java, Adobe, Firefox, Chrome, and more.
Another advantage to implementing automated patch management is that end-users are no longer greeted with periodic pop-ups that their software is out of date. We have found that the user may not know whether or not the update is safe, and adopt the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra of updating vital software. With patch management, everything vitally important to compliance and data security is patched on a regular basis, and these pop-ups are eliminated.
Finally, when updates are performed manually, it is hard to know if a reboot will be required, and how long updates might take to be applied. When the amount of downtime is an unknown, it is more likely for a dental practice to put off security patching during business hours.
Reporting can Determine the Need for Patch Management
Ask our techs for a report of missing security patches on your vital programs. Even at our most basic service level, our support software gives us the ability to determine what patches need to be applied to which PCs in a matter of minutes. If you find your practice has many missing patches, then patch management might be for you. This report is available for free! Just contact our dental tech support team for details.
HIPAA compliant dental IT is what we do. Check out our dental IT services for more information.