Cybersecurity Archives

Tower’s Jesse Shade Warns of Cyberattacks During COVID-19 and Tells How to Mitigate Them

May 15, 2020

ominous figure embedded in coding to illustrate cybersecurity threats

When Tower held its cybersecurity webinar in February, presenters stressed that cyberattacks increase dramatically during a crisis. This certainly holds true for COVID-19. Attacks soared by 330% in its early weeks, according to an Atlas VPN report.

Workers’ compensation payers, third-party administrators, ancillary care providers, and MSP compliance companies pose very attractive targets – regardless of the size of the company.

They store, manage, and transfer large volumes of protected health information (PHI), which is quite valuable to criminals.

In this WorkCompWire article, our Senior Vice President of Information Technology, Jesse Shade, explains how cyberattacks occur and describes security measures to protect networks, systems, and data.

During the work-from-home transition, experienced IT pros deployed VPNs to connect remote machines to enterprise networks and installed the latest and greatest security software.

However, if a company can buy antivirus and antimalware software off the shelf or online, so can criminals. And, they analyze these products and create ways to work-around their security capabilities.

Threat actors can even enter a network undetected and stay there for months and learn how to circumvent its security measures. Jesse recommends proactive solutions to prevent breaches in this timely story.

Cybersecurity Webinar Garners More Coverage

March 6, 2020

hand shoosing selecting security from a variety of icons to illustrate cybersecurity webinar

Cybersecurity is a hot topic and a major threat to all businesses and organizations – especially those handling personal health data. Risk & Insurance’s Courtney DuChene covers the threat in detail, including data from Tower MSA Partners’ cybersecurity webinar and a separate webinar featuring Safety National’s Mark Walls. Read it here: hipaa violations are just one of the exposures in a workers comp industry cyber attack

Cybersecurity Threats & You

March 3, 2020

Many businesses don’t think a data breach will happen to them; small businesses especially assume they’re too small to attack. However, Tower’s Feb. 19 cybersecurity webinar featured a survey that showed that 11% of very small businesses and 44% of midsized organizations experienced a data breach in the last 12 months. A quarter of these companies had to file for bankruptcy, 10% went out of business entirely. See Nancy Grover’s excellent coverage of the webinar for workerscompensation.com. And, you can watch the webinar at Tower’s webinar.

How Do You Know Your MSP Compliance Data is Secure?

January 29, 2020

Understanding and Preventing Cybersecurity Threats

February 19, 2 PM ET

Minnesota Hospital Breach Impacts Personal and Medical Data of 50,000 Patients

A Billion Medical Images Exposed, but Doctors Ignore Warnings

Names, Social Security Numbers Exposed in Moss Adams Breach

These headlines ran in just the past 30 days. How secure is your MSP compliance data? A 2019 report from IBM Security and the Ponemon Institute puts the chance of experiencing a data breach within two years at 29.6%. Are you ready?

But why is a MSP compliance company bringing up data security? Because as a holder of hundreds of thousands of records with personal identification information (PII) and personal health information (PHI), cybersecurity and protecting client data are central to our business.

Data security responsibility goes from the desk level to the head of IT to the CEO and everyone in between–including your vendors. Tower is pleased to help you protect your injured workers’ data with this informative webinar How do you know your MSP Compliance Data is Secure? Understanding and Preventing Cybersecurity Threats

Moderated by our Chief Compliance Officer Dan Anders, Esq., a panel of information technology and cybersecurity specialists, Tower’s VP of Information Technology, Jesse Shade, Chris Nyhuis, CEO, Vigilant Technology Solutions and Robert Kolb, President, Premier Mindset, will:

Illustrate the threat to organizations of all sizes, through real-life examples and data.

Describe the intersection of cybersecurity and MSP compliance.

Explain how cybercriminals snatch and use personal data.

Propose simple desk level and higher-level systematic measures to prevent data breaches.

Invite your IT professionals and senior leaders to join us.

When you click on the link below to register, you can also submit a question to be answered during the webinar.

Hope you can join us on February 19 at 2 pm ET.

Stay safe,

Dan Anders

Chief Compliance Officer

Register Now

Tower MSA Partners Engages Vigilant Technology Solutions to Add Another Layer of Data Security

November 13, 2019

DELRAY BEACH, Fla.–As part of its commitment to continually enhance its technology, improve data security and combat cyber threats, Tower MSA Partners, which provides Medicare Secondary Payer services to the workers’ compensation and liability industries, has entered a partnership agreement with Vigilant Technology Solutions. An Ohio-based cybersecurity firm, Vigilant is providing its powerful CyberDNA Managed Network Security Monitoring service.

Read it here