Of course, you will be living in a kicked anthill for days. The trick is to make sure that all the scurrying around is not just mindless motion, but actually protects the organization by:

• Meeting legal responsibilities,
• Protecting the organization’s reputation to the extent possible,
• Immediately stopping intrusions and mitigating the damages,
• Finding out how the breach occurred,
• Repairing the vulnerabilities, and,
• Making sure your risk assessment, security plans, and operating procedures reflect any necessary changes.

Meeting Legal Responsibilities

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) breach notification rule essentially requires entities that have had a breach to inform the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the affected individuals, and in some cases, the media, within 60 days. There are exceptions, but these are best handled by lawyers. Since there are stiff penalties for not reporting security breaches that should have been reported, but no penalties for reporting security breaches that did not need to be reported, it’s best to err on the side of caution.

Protecting the Organization’s Reputation To The Extent Possible

It is unfortunately not true that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Your organization’s reputation is going to take at least a small hit. Perhaps the worst example possible is the behavior of Experian, a credit reporting service, in response to its massive data breach. They failed to report it, they did not notify affected individuals, they dribbled out information, repeatedly contradicted the information they dribbled out, and immediately tried to monetize the breach by selling protective services to those affected. Everything that could have been done wrong in the early phase was done wrong. Apply the Golden Rule here. Look at things from the perspective of those whose data has been exposed. What would they want to be done? Figure that out, and at least pledge to do that much.

Immediately Stopping Intrusions and Mitigating the Damages

The first step is to get the affected devices off the network and isolated, so they can no longer serve as points of entry. The next step is to check the system and audit logs to identify the source of the penetration. Thirdly, it’s important to force an immediate password change for everyone, if passwords are still being used. Of course, if the source of the breach is the medical director’s smartphone, which was left in an Uber, the only way this data can be remotely deleted is for companies using a Mobile Device Management plan.

Finding Out How The Breach Occurred

In some cases (see above), the source of the data breach will be glaringly obvious. In others, it may be very hard to find. Your own IT staff may be too close to the problem to see it. In those cases, bringing in a computer forensics firm may be useful or even essential. Determining the root cause of the breach, once the details are known, requires thinking through policies and procedures. You’ll need the skills of a good detective, combined with those of an excellent IT specialist.

As illustrated above, there is always a tradeoff between ease of access and security of access. Does everyone really need remote access to patient records at all times, using devices that can be lost or stolen? Depending on the organization and how it delivers services, the answer may be yes or no. But if it is “no,” serious consideration should be given to limiting remote access. Of course, if you’re working with a managed IT services provider, they can set you up with a Mobile Device Management plan so that any lost or stolen devices can be remotely wiped of all data.

Repairing The Vulnerabilities

Once the source of the breach and the root cause have been identified, the vulnerabilities need to be repaired. The issue of 24/7 remote access from stealable devices is one example. Use of cloud services is another. Having data in the cloud is wonderful. Having unprotected data in the cloud is not. Several recent breaches have occurred because, even though access to the cloud from an organization’s network was protected, the server in the cloud itself was totally open – no password in place. Granted, this defies imagination, but it has happened more than once.

If something like this has occurred, every policy and procedure that relates to the root cause needs to be looked at. This has to be done slowly and carefully; it is not an exercise to be carried out in panic mode. In most cases, this type of error will not occur if you’re working with a managed IT services provider. They have too many checks and balances in place to allow such a glaring mistake.

It most often happens to companies who employ poorly trained in-house IT staff who spend all day playing games and talking with friends on social media. Again, though this scenario is shocking, it is occurring across the nation with more frequency. Don’t let your CEO find out the hard way that his in-house IT people actually don’t have much network and computer experience. Their last job was serving up hamburgers at a local fast-food chain.

Making Sure Your Risk Assessment, Security Plans, And Operating Procedures Reflect Any Necessary Changes

Having a credible, annually updated risk assessment is part of the HIPAA Security Rule. A breach presents an opportunity here. If it occurred, your risk assessment either did not identify it or did not prioritize it; your security plan did not encompass it; your operating procedures ignored it, or some combination of the above occurred. The breach gives you a chance to rethink the security assessment, the security plan, and your operating procedures. Take advantage of it.

Conclusion

A data breach is painful, but it is also an opportunity for health care organizations to assess their security approaches and make improvements. Never waste a crisis. If you have onsite IT staff members, they may need more thorough training in security protocols. In fact, this is probably a good time to ask a local managed IT services provider to come out and hold security awareness classes for your entire workforce.

EdTech has a long history of being misunderstood, underutilized, and of lacking support in every way. It is one of those bugaboos in education that seems like such a wonderful idea, but often falls apart in execution as money fears cause administrators to scale back. Lacking proper follow-through lessens the efficacy of even the best in educational technology – and that’s just a plain old waste of money.

Educators need support, but it’s nearly impossible – and very expensive – to put together an in-house ed-tech support team. And with 80% of schools now using cloud-based data storage, adequate tech support is crucial. Districts are limited by their budgets and the size of their staff. Any large-scale upgrades or maintenance can take forever and tie up literally every member of the IT support team. When there isn’t anything big going on, layoffs have to come down. Otherwise, there are too many people drawing salary and benefits for almost no work. That’s obviously untenable, so the default is to simply under-staff and makes do (which never works out optimally).

It’s an unenviable position to be in as an educational administrator. The solution is third-party tech support services.

Schools Are Already Doing It, And It Works!

Transportation, software support, substitute teaching, accounting…the list of third-party contractors in education keeps growing. Utilizing a third-party support contractor makes even more sense than some of the other contracts your district may have. IT gets highly technical and specialized. The skill set necessary to cater to a school or district’s needs is worth more than most schools can afford – especially in the public school system.

Plus, districts usually have SaaS applications – “software as a service.” These are applications licensed by schools that have native help sections. SaaS as part of licensing contracts gives districts the ability to call for tech support via phone, email, chatbox, or scheduled in-person service calls. Contracting out for IT services in general works in much the same way.

Scalability

Imagine having extra staff available when needed who just disappear when the need is gone. Contracting with a firm gives the school access to additional staff in emergencies or planned maintenance. Jobs with a large scope can be planned ahead with the IT contractor, with funds set aside for the additional hours and workers needed for projects. Having a contractor already on the books makes it easier to plan and bring in more people. It makes communication stress-free because the third-party will already be familiar with the school.

Using a third party allows administrators to:

• Order staffing as needed.
• Expect efficient, effective response to emergencies like outages, virus threats, and data breaches.
• Ensure smooth, quick execution of planned upgrades with minimal disruption.
• Support staff by offering assistance to individual faculty members.
• Give faculty and staff immediate remote or in-person assistance.

Cost-Effective Expertise On Speed-Dial, Not On Staff

Even if a district is fortunate enough to have more than a skeleton crew of knowledgeable IT support staff, they likely won’t keep them long enough to become well-acquainted with the ins and outs of the district itself due to the comparatively low pay in school systems.

In Ron Schacter’s “Building An Ed Tech Dream Team” (District Administration March 2012), now six years old, school IT staff might expect to start at about $55,000 for basic support, but staff such as network architects will earn somewhere around $75,000-$80,000. Those IT workers could make a lot more if they went into the private sector, so they’re not going to stay long.

Thus, the supposed benefit of having someone in-house (i.e., their familiarity with the district’s needs) disappears. High turnover rates make for poor planning, disruption of services, and yearly retraining of a person or team upon whom everyone relies. It is poor planning that costs too much.

Moreover, with demands on educational technology growing, having a fully functional team able to respond to small and large-scale emergencies quickly grows too expensive for even larger districts. How can smaller districts or private, parochial, and charter schools possibly keep up? The reality is that many tried-and-true methods and educational tools simply won’t cut it anymore. The world is changing, including the field of education. Districts must find cost-effective ways to keep up.

Third-Party Support Supports Teachers

Teachers are not IT specialists. They are educators and must have the resources to teach. Put the power in their hands to use Ed Tech tools the way they were meant to be used. Stop using tech experts to restart computers and advise teachers to use Internet Explorer rather than Mozilla for their new application. Don’t make a teacher ask a kid from 4^th hour to fix a problem with the desktop. Being reactionary rather than planning ahead always costs more. Sound planning that includes using third-party tech support offers flexibility and cost savings that maximize the educational benefits of rapidly evolving educational technology.

Conclusion

Reluctance to change leads to wasted time and money. By hiring less than the bare minimum IT staff and paying professionals well below their value, schools open themselves up to larger scale losses in the long-run, including:

• High turnover requiring extensive, repeated searches for competent staff
• Purchasing the wrong tech for a school’s needs
• Purchasing something that is technically correct, but then cannot be fully utilized because the IT support is not there
• Inefficient research carried out by non-tech staff
• Network outages and unreliability cost time and money as well as loss of teaching time
• Loss of staff and faculty due to frustrations over a poorly maintained infrastructure

When it comes to schools, you simply don’t have the resources to waste.

Every day, it seems, another security threat is in the news. The latest one involves some flaws in Intel chips that actually introduce a new vulnerability. The patches are out to address this, and hopefully, someone in your IT organization is tracking and applying them. But this is only one of the many ways your company can be vulnerable to cyber-criminals.

Good Security Is Proactive

Patches have to be applied. That’s good. But it’s also reactive. Doing whatever the news of the day tells you to do in regards to security is not a security plan. So, what is? And what does a good plan look like? Proactive security measures address every potential threat.

Human Factors

The biggest risk to security, by far, is human actors. These include your own employees and bad actors outside the organization. Humans, as the story of former White House Chief of Staff, John Podesta’s hacked email shows, make mistakes. To review, Podesta got an email he found suspicious, asking him to change his Gmail password. He sent a memo to his IT department. The IT staffer involved meant to tell him it was suspicious but made a typo in his reply email and told him it was okay. So, Podesta went ahead and click on the link exposing his database to Russian hackers. What went wrong here?

Facepalm Moment!

There are lots of things, but the most fundamental of them is that if security is a real concern, one does not use a free, public email service for email. Whatever else was in place, this episode shows that the DNC’s approach to security was flawed at the most fundamental level. People working at the White House should not use free, public services for sensitive email. It is a safe bet that, if you examine your organization’s security posture closely, there is at least one such facepalm moment lurking somewhere.

People do stupid things. One of the jobs of IT security professionals is to anticipate those things and make sure they don’t happen. Moving from passwords, which can be insecurely stored, to biometric identifiers, is one way to do this. People can’t easily steal your fingerprints or iris.

Portable devices are another issue. Having 24/7 access to a business device is great. But is it necessary? Laptops and smartphones are eminently losable. Ask whether every employee who has remote access needs it. Make sure you can remotely erase your company data from their device if it is lost or stolen.

The boundaries between work and non-work life grow ever thinner. There is no need to deny employees access to personal email. But on the company email server? Have them take personal mail to a browser-based service. Keep work and personal accounts firmly separated. This is a basic step that every company could and should be doing.

Auditing (Gently) The Vendors

There are good reasons to outsource many IT functions. Day-to-day operations rarely require high level IT expertise. It can easily be obtained from IT consultants and managed outsource providers and used as needed. Moreover, using outsourced IT providers who have many clients allows your organization to take advantage of the mistakes that their other customers have made. Most IT professionals have seen and heard it all. Use of consultants is a very inexpensive means of knowledge transfer, far cheaper than developing the same experience with in-house techs.

Make sure the IT provider knows their stuff. You may find a few whose security is really no better than yours. This is where it’s so important to check the company out before hiring them. Check their feedback online. See what their customers are saying about them. Do they really know how to secure your data and records so that you don’t get hit with a ransomware virus? Will, they set up both onsite and offsite backups so you’re never without your data even if disaster strikes?

Needing To Know

Transparency is, in general, good. But when dealing with health information that is protected by regulations like HIPAA, less is more. That is, less access is better insurance against risk. No one should be deprived of the data they need to do their job. But with protected health information, no one without a need to know should have access. Coders may need to see the physician’s notes in order to properly bill for services rendered. Billers do not. All they have to do is charge for the codes that are given to them. They do not need access to clinical data.

Conclusion

These considerations are very basic. They require no esoteric knowledge. But thinking through them will help you arrive at your own conclusions about whether your data is really safe. Remember these basics:

• Be proactive about security.
• Never take lightly the human factor.
• Ensure third-party vendor security.
• Apply the “need to know” concept.
• Get help from a professional IT managed services provider if you still feel uneasy about your data’s security.

Communication—this is so important for the proper running of any business; however, it is even more essential for law firms where the stakes are arguably much higher. Over the years, communication between attorneys and their clients was a time-consuming process that depended primarily on scheduled face-to-face meetings and paper documents being mailed or hand-delivered for review and revision.

As in-office communication has evolved, fax machines, and then e-mailed messages allowed for a quicker turn-around for sharing documents and information. Unfortunately, this did not make collaboration with others, whether in-office or across the country, any easier. E-mail is notoriously inefficient for collaboration, since it is not totally secure, and as an e-mail chain of correspondence grows longer, it can become difficult to keep track of specific information. Important or sensitive info can become misplaced, or even mistakenly deleted.

Although initially costly and complicated, the platforms in the early 2000s made digital collaboration and sharing possible, especially for larger firms willing to invest in them. As technology continues to improve, it becomes increasingly easier to update and advance to the next level of IT solutions for firms of every size.

Modern methods of collaboration provide more security, better organization, and quicker ways to share ideas, as well as documents. Faster speeds, of course, directly correlate to how much one is able to get done in every given billable hour. As the old adage goes, “Time is money.”

What Do Collaboration Platforms Include?

An attorney’s day is often hectic consisting of communicating with new and existing clients, formulating strategies with associates, and managing cases. Add to that such tasks as updating calendars, logging hours, and making case notes. Often, each of these activities occurs using different management tools, requiring busy individuals to log in and out, consuming valuable time better spent on more important business.

With a collaboration platform, law firms are able to keep all billing and calendar systems, document sharing, emails, messaging, and video communications in one location. It should be available to each attorney and staff member affiliated with the firm who needs to view it. Granting access to all employees can be a big security risk.

Available on your desktop, laptop, or mobile device, collaboration platforms keep all communication in one convenient location. They allow users to chat one-on-one or with a team. In addition, they can organize messages and documents, share quick and concise memos, and start or join a video conference. Collaboration software also enables associates to share computer screens and documents, which facilitates ongoing team conversations. This provides a method for each associate to begin and end his or her day on one platform for ultimate efficiency.

How Does New Technology Improve a Law Firm’s Ability to Collaborate?

Modern law firms realize that effective communication and better organization methods improve their ability to serve their clients. This will also increase their productivity and profits. Collaboration involves individuals with different specialties and strengths working together to produce superior outcomes.

Whether participating colleagues are interacting in person or across a distance, everyone needs to be able to share documents, ideas, and information. Video conference capabilities allow collaborators to speak “face-to-face” even though they are communicating remotely.

As a team of attorneys build on the ideas of each other, brainstorming, combining knowledge and perspectives, they are able to create something that is greater than what each could provide individually. At the end of the day, each has a record of all relevant documents, emails, and messages available via a mobile application on their choice of electronic device.

How to Choose the Right Collaboration Platform

Collaboration software continues to influence how law firms view communication in the office but choosing the right one can be daunting. Savvy buyers look for a straightforward, user-friendly option that provides consumer support and training. They should select a platform that includes the ability to integrate some of their key programs with the existing systems, so work continues uninterrupted. Choosing software that is capable of automatic updates is advised. In fact, access to analytics, depositions, legal research, and AI software are not out of the reach for future options.

Consider choices that allow the administration to set the controls for the system and monitor the initial adoption and use of the platform, as well as ensure associates are complying with all data security standards. Piloting the collaboration platform with a small team eases the organization into the new techniques and allows the administrators to work out any issues before releasing it to the entire firm. This can prevent glitches and time-consuming problems.

In Conclusion

Technology continues to advance and online collaboration is no longer considered a new idea. As innovative technology platforms develop, they will increasingly be demanded in the office. The ability to collaborate online benefits both clients and their legal counselors. Clients no longer have to contact the office to request a hard copy of their file. By using an online portal, all parties involved can review, revise, and comment on documents instantly and conveniently on their personal computer.

As the dynamics of the legal workplace change, organizations must adapt and implement the most efficient and modern options available. Collaboration platforms are a logical and integral part of the legal office’s larger IT approach. Clients expect their lawyers to remain relevant, and law firms that fail to update, are not supplying their clients with the best experience or the most successful results.

Workforce management (WFM) software is an all-encompassing term for mobile and desktop programs that are created to support a business at managing its staff scheduling. The software began in call centers and other service businesses that have a large number of workers who are normally paid by the hour.

Helping a company gain insight to utilize business metrics, WFM software gives management the ability to better judge the number of service agents that are needed or the number of people it takes to make a product within a certain amount of time.

According to Gartner Inc., one of the top research firms, workforce management software has five main roles:

Labor scheduling:

Help administer employees’ skills and compliance requirements more effectively.

Time and work data collection:

Capture and give very detailed information about the best use of labor.

Leave management:

Process paid time-off requests with a keen understanding of the staffing and liability implications.

Task and activity management:

Provide a detailed view of labor-management requirements to help with complex decision making required for activity-based management.

Time and attendance:

Receive feedback from other modules and employ rules alongside the reported times, based on the company’s needs.

Let’s break down the benefits of using workforce management software as your company begins to experience the positives and negatives of growing.

Engaged Employees Lead to a Better Customer Experience

A national poll has shown that 51% of workers in the United States do not feel engaged. These employees cost their employers as much as $300 billion each year, according to that same poll.  Forecasting manually may mean your organization is spending too much time scheduling agents at times when they are not needed and not scheduling when they are in high demand. At the same time, it is far easier for you to over- or under-schedule your employees, which then leads to both employee disengagement and, ultimately, customer dissatisfaction.

The use of WFM software for your company has the ability to achieve the following:

• Administer work scheduling, paid time-off requests and day-to-day business happenings.
• Collect time and labor data.
• Evaluate past performance and call volume developments.
• Accurately predict staffing and scheduling demands.
• Foresee unexpected events which will help you know when to add incentives or give encouragement to your employees.
• Add labor flexibility to provide multiple scenarios that simulate future scheduling restraints.

Having accurate quantitative data that WFM software provides will help you assess and understand your employee’s satisfaction and engagement levels. This will ultimately guide you to providing a quality work environment where engaged employees will transfer this positive experience directly to your customers.

The Use of Real-Time Analytics Will Help You Predict the Future More Accurately

As WFM evolves, the next generation of this software will combine real-time, speech, and emotional analytics with agent-enabled workflow engines and computer telephony integration (CTI) applications. What this ultimately means for your business is that it will help managers stay one step ahead of developing situations.

These accurate clarifications allow managers to apply emotional or voice analytics, which can help them better understand what is happening in real-time in the call center. Also, while staying informed about the current work environment, it allows you to include a process that automatically notifies customer agents and gives them suggestions for handling high volumes or escalated customer related issues.

For example, your company has just rolled out a new product that has an unforeseen issue or glitch. The advanced WFM software will be able to detect an issue, alert management, and give up-to-the-minute feedback and advice to the customer service department so they can have ready solutions for the upset customers.

Can Workforce Management Software Help With Compliance?

Having proactive processes that address issues before they emerge, will also allow managers to ensure that the company complies with all call-recording requirements. These requirements include the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), HIPAA, and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). With these requirements and policies always changing, this gives you the peace of mind of avoiding potential penalties in the long-run. The newest workforce management systems guarantee your organization complies with these regulations and has records for all of the calls just in case you get a surprise audit.

Helping Your Business Launch to a New Level

Workforce Management (WFM) is a strategic asset in advancing your business goals of providing the highest-quality customer service at the best rate. In today’s need for quality customer service, interactions take on ever-evolving shapes and forms. WFM creates forecasts and schedules for agents with various skills who are handling customer and employee interactions in a variety of ways. WFM enables managers to create proposed future schedules, agents to bid on the schedules, and managers to incorporate the bids into final schedules.

Conclusion

Having the ability to maintain employee engagement and customer satisfaction will give you the opportunity to focus on the quality of the product or service that you are creating. Ultimately, it provides the needed tools to move your company to the next level. Experience continued growth and success with today’s innovative workforce management software.