Constant Readiness When a Disaster Strikes

Readiness

March 2020 represented a critical shift in business operations for local and global companies. For many companies, it was just another day at the office – albeit you were working remotely versus coming to the physical office. Were you prepared? Was it an IT and cybersecurity scramble or were you appropriately equipped? The difference is derived from proper business continuity and disaster recovery readiness, communication, and continuous preparation.

HealthEdge understands the requirements needed to keep up in a fast-paced world. At a moment’s notice, things could change, whether it is a natural disaster, cyber-attack, or other unforeseen events that could have an impact on our ability to meet customer needs. HealthEdge prepares for the unexpected with Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery to mitigate damage, minimize downtime, and reduce the impact on business operations.

Similar to the Global COVID Pandemic, HealthEdge ensures that our business processes, workforce, IT infrastructure and cybersecurity controls are ready for unexpected events – large or small. Our team identifies critical business functions, which includes systems, applications, and essential data that is needed for business operations to continue. Risks and vulnerabilities are assessed for critical business operations and considerations are made for the likelihood of various disasters and the potential impact of data loss or disruption.

Plans

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans are developed to outline how our teams will quickly recover, relying on backup and contingency plans and alternate work arrangement locations. These plans are tested and updated regularly to ensure they remain effective. While aligned with common themes and content, individual and custom product and facility-centric Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity and Emergency Preparedness Plans are maintained to ensure we are prepared based on geography and product group. The HealthEdge IT Security and Compliance teams maintain these plans. We augment internal efforts with external expertise to help ensure we identify and constantly mature the program based on emerging best practices and global threats. Copies are maintained in the HealthEdge Governance Repository for offsite backup purposes and are readily available should the need arise.

Testing

Team simulations help us to identify gaps or weaknesses in the plans, as well as ensure the plan is consistent with changes to business operations or IT infrastructure. These simulations and live tests occur among small teams, multi-offices and business products, or directly with customers. The ultimate objective is to stress test and be prepared – whether our workforce is located in a major metropolis with regional redundancy or in their village in India where local Internet and communications systems could have reliance issues.

Recent examples include:

• Testing Key Leadership Response Times – Our team uses recent regional events, such as flooding, to determine how prepared Leadership, Human Resources, and IT are to account for and maintain communications with the workforce as the community recovers.
• Testing Remote Access – Our team sends groups to work remotely to assess latency, communications system constraints or home bandwidth issues.
• Testing Alternative Work Sites – Our team evaluates the potential impacts of destruction of physical office space and safely reroutes employees to an alternate location.

As the Boy Scouts motto says, “Be Prepared” since that is what our customers expect of us: safeguard their data, maintain high availability, and deliver as promised.

Education and Awareness

Employee awareness is key in ensuring everyone knows their role should a response be initiated. HealthEdge conducts regular training for employees who work onsite, hybrid, and remote. In addition to this training, we produce education alerts and messages to not only support the employees but also their families. We are accountable for ensuring our systems, networks and data centers are prepared, as well as the home environment of our employees and their families. Protecting the family and home is critical for a “family first HealthEdge”, but to also ensure they are prepared in the event they are called upon to primarily work remotely.

Getting Our Ducks in a Row When Disaster Strikes

We value the trust our customers place with our business and strive to always deliver service, even when the unexpected occurs. As with other facets of information security, business continuity and emergency preparedness is another critical way HealthEdge protects you, your members, and the entire HealthEdge family. It’s also another way we ensure our ducks are in a row.