Welcome to Part 2 of Blip Talk’s Compliance series! In Part 1, we talked about how regulations for technology compliance and cybersecurity are increasing and creating new challenges for companies to tackle. Today, we’re looking into the more public “costs” of not keeping up with compliance requirements and how detrimental this can be to a business of any size.
The saying “there is no such thing as bad PR” is no longer true; bad PR is very real when there is a breach to your data systems.
Envision this scenario for a moment.
Taking call after call from angry stakeholders, screaming for answers. Client after client is dialing in, demanding to speak to ONLY YOU, as you explain over and over again what happened. At the end of each call, they tell you that they can no longer do business with you anyway.
You can physically feel your revenue dropping; you can almost hear it hit the bottom of the well. Hearing the grumblings and mumblings of your team, you know they are concerned for their jobs and are probably job hunting while you talk to irate clients.
That is a bad day – and it continues for weeks or even months. Day in and day out. The feeling that the business you have worked so hard for is about to crumble is one of the worst in the world, and you’re now considering moving to the middle of nowhere and leaving the corporate world behind.
When the regulatory bodies come knocking to investigate, will they find a lack of compliance controls? Or policies that have yet to be implemented? Or no policies at all?
If an investigative audit finds that a data breach resulted from your business not meeting compliance standards, they won’t accept that you were too busy and just didn’t get around to it.
The Cost of Noncompliance
Despite the heavy regulations surrounding the healthcare industry, the number of individuals whose data was compromised just through healthcare data breaches doubled between 2022 and 2023, jumping from 28 million to 56 million individuals.
Healthcare organizations are significant targets for cyberattacks, mainly via malware or ransomware. With actual life-or-death consequences resulting from organizational operations being stalled, there is a much higher likelihood that ransoms will be paid. The shift to digital health records and telehealth has also expanded the attack surface giving more opportunity for access to Protected Health Information (PHI).
In early 2024, a ransomware attack at Change Healthcare that resulted in at least 100 million individuals’ (or 1 in 3 Americans) data being compromised became the largest ever known PHI breach. Despite payment of a $22 million ransom, the stolen PHI was still passed along to another ransomware group.
New legislation has since been proposed, the Health Infrastructure Security and Accountability Act, to provide additional cybersecurity standards that will better protect healthcare networks from cyberattacks (interpretation: entities under HIPAA will have a lot more work to do).
For HIPAA-regulated organizations, violations can result in multi-million-dollar penalties, depending on the severity and length of time the violation occurred. On top of the penalties and fines, the cost to remediate a cyberattack can be even more substantial. Currently, Change Healthcare anticipates a total of $2.87 billion in direct response and cyberattack impact costs.
Continuous Cybersecurity with Blip Tech
Having solid policies in place to meet technology compliance requirements isn’t enough if those policies aren’t actually implemented. While a regulatory authority may give your business a slight break on fines if mitigation efforts have been made, the overall financial and reputational impact of a cyberattack can have a lasting or even fatal effect on the company. Technology compliance must be a priority for businesses that want to build a trustworthy brand, regardless of industry.
The first part of this series already touched on how Blip Tech’s Managed Compliance as a Service (MCaaS) program provides your business with continuous compliance monitoring, but what does that mean for cybersecurity?
Our MCaaS program can be integrated with our Managed Security Services program, providing your business with 24×7 protection through robust cybersecurity solutions that strengthen compliance controls. In addition, through our partnership with security and compliance automation platform, Drata, Blip Tech manages all of your technology compliance data in one spot.
Don’t wait for your business to be the next data breach on the local (or national!) news. Blip Tech’s MCaaS program will show your customers that you know their data deserves protection.
Contact us today at Compliance@BlipHelps.com to protect your business and join us next week for the final installment of our Compliance series.
About the Author: Sara is the Co-Founder and Compliance & Communications Director of Blip Business Technologies. She has over a decade of compliance experience in various industries, including education and nonprofits. A lifelong learner, Sara holds master’s degrees in communications and business leadership.
