I have a unique perspective on healthcare cybersecurity, having spent the beginning of my professional career as a practicing nurse and later moving into cybersecurity consulting. That perspective helps me critically examine the security programs at the many hospitals, physicians and other provider offices that I visit as part of my CDW practice. During conversations with healthcare IT teams, I’ve identified three crucial best practices to protect patient information: vulnerability assessments, penetration tests and incident response playbooks.

Let’s explore each of these critical topics.

In the midst of crisis situations, hospitals and healthcare organizations need to be able to communicate important health and safety information to patients in a timely manner — and at scale. During COVID-19, hospitals have scrambled to set up nonessential personnel to work remotely, including call center staff. This has led some hospitals to look for alternative ways to communicate with their communities. Here’s how one CDW customer recently implemented call center automation.

Vulnerability scanning, penetration testing and red teaming each play a vital role in an organization’s security program. It’s important that technology leaders understand the different roles they play so they may combine them in the manner most effective for their organizations.

ServiceNow recently announced four crisis management applications it is making available, at no cost, to provide digital workflows for organizations struggling to meet the new challenges that COVID-19 is creating on a daily basis.

From coordinating emergency responses to tracking exposures among coworkers, to instant mobile distribution of critical updates, these apps can make the difference between being prepared to mitigate the risks of unexpected events or being broadsided by them.

Join our live Q&A webinar on April 9 to learn more about these apps and how CDW ServiceNow Solutions can help support them.

With the world turned upside down, some industries are decentralizing their workforce while others are experiencing an explosion of new hires. You solve the biggest problems first — ensuring skeleton crews can keep the office lights on, at-home workers can access their VPNs and call their customers, and new hires have the basic equipment required to fulfill their increasingly vital roles.

Once the dust settles (a bit), you are hit with a second wave of challenges — things you didn’t even consider before. If the office is still open, who’s ordering toner for the printers and changing it when they run low? For employees that need to produce business-critical documents, is there a printer powerful enough to address those “asks” and small enough to fit in an ad-hoc home office? If you doubled your print demand when you doubled your essential workforce, will your current printers be up to the task?

I’m going to walk you through these critical printer questions and suggest some ready-made solutions that our team has developed.

A common concern among CIOs today is operating their IT departments as a business. In a way, these CIOs are beginning to think like COOs. And as they do, they’re implementing changes that lead to improvements in their operations. They’re managing their workflows more strategically and effectively, and that pays dividends for customers. As IT leaders bolster IT operations, they’re also adding value to their companies.

So how can an IT team intent on internal improvement ensure that its transformation helps the company as whole? I tell my clients to tackle such initiatives in three distinct steps.