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Technology That Fits Your Business

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One of the most exciting developments in business technology in recent years has been the development of a wide range of cloud solutions.  These IT solutions are becoming so widespread and important that now, the United States Department of Defense has appointed a ‘cloud services’ broker who must issue approval before components of any department may move onto a cloud computing basis.  The Chief Information Officer for the Department of Defense, Terry Takai, has announced that DISA, the Defense Information Systems Agency will serve as the designated broker. 

Any business that deals with medical devices at any phase of the supply chain will need to prepare to comply with a new rule published in the Federal Register on July 10th.  Full IT compliance may involve the use of heightened IT services, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses that may not be well staffed at present to deal with the requirements of the new mandate. 

Although there was some confusion at first in the news media concerning the Supreme Court's landmark decision on President Obama's Affordable Care Act, now that experts have had a chance to digest the ruling fully, it is clear that the health care law has been upheld in most of its major details.  This may not seem like it has IT security implications, but it actually does because the law moving forward means not only that states will need to set up exchanges for health insurance purchases, but that all ACOs will have to meet new requirements related to information technology.

A recent analysis of the first compliance audits for HIPAA, the nation's landmark health information security and privacy law, has found that small organizations are experiencing more difficulty than large ones in meeting the stringent IT security requirements of the regulation.  According to Linda Sanches, who helped to supervise the audit process for the federal government, "HIPAA hasn't been a priority for several years...Risk assessments were done six years ago and haven't been looked at since."

Virtually unheard of a few years ago, IT governance is now one of the industry’s fastest growing fields.  As such, it is essential that every IT person in your organization understand what it is, and why it's so important.  This is particularly true for your company’s managers and officers, as their decisions related to IT governance could have a huge financial impact on your organization.

 
Payment processor First Data has revealed that over the course of the past year, there has been a surge of hacker incidences seeking unauthorized access to systems that use a point-of-sale approach for credit cards.  Unfortunately, for small and medium sized businesses, the merchants that are being targeted most heavily by tech criminals are those that are classified as Level 4 by Visa.  Such businesses, which process relatively low numbers of transactions each year, are responsible for slightly less than one-third of all credit card transactions that take place in the United States. 

In a managed services model for IT support, the IT company managing your data center operations can implement a great deal of automation.  This is to the benefit of the business or other organization contracting for managed services, and not just because automation tends to lower overall costs.

IT outsourcing encompasses a great many different functions that can help businesses to lower their costs and become leaner operations.  One of the most useful of these functions is managed security services, sometimes simply referred to as managed security.  There are several different ways managed security can help to create a more robust computing environment. 

Any business or other organization, including non-profits, that deal in any way with patient medical information, needs to make sure that all systems and programs enable its workers to fully comply with the mandates embedded in HIPAA, the nation’s primary law regarding security and confidentiality of medical records.  This fact was highlighted by a recent decision of an appellate court, which ruled that those who violate the provisions of HIPAA might face criminal penalties including jail time, even if the individuals involved had no idea that they were contravening the law. 

A piece of federal legislation known as the Federal Information Management Security Act (FISMA), is making its way through the constitutional requirements for full adoption.  Most recently, it passed the House of Representatives via Voice Vote.  The FISMA bill would provide updates to the law, which was first enacted a decade ago in 2002.