The unthinkable happened – all systems down, a total blackout, having to rely on Facebook and Twitter to communicate with your users. It took more than one week to get all systems back online, and by that time, sentiment was troublesome. While no one knows with certainty how much data was compromised or lost as a result of TherapyNotes being hacked, we do know that the impact is still being felt within users.
It was ugly, but TherapyNotes managed to get back online.
As a mental health professional, you have probably seen such meltdown situations with your clients. Yet, this was different. Your client has one body, one mind, one family and one life, and there no option to prepare for such a disaster with a backup of everything.
In this case, it was a series of machines consisting of software, hardware, data and connectivity. Every one of these components can be setup with a backup for fault tolerance. Certainly, this could happen to any company, but it doesn’t.
On another note, imagine if you are a top mental health professional in your field and store all your patient data on your personal computer in your home or office with very little chance of an outsider getting access to it. Then you click on a link in an email that seems to be from a client or a friend, but it actually was a link to a destructive virus and it deletes all your patient files on your secure encrypted HIPAA compliant desktop. The last backup you had saved is a month old and it is now unreadable because the software you used to back it up got wiped out from that desktop and you have no way to read the backup.
Do you have the expertise and technical skills to recover from such a disaster? Probably not!
There are many lessons learned from this experience with TherapyNotes - here are the top 3:
1. Protect yourself to avoid a disaster
2. Prepare yourself for fast recovery in the event of a disaster
3. Evaluate and test your backup systems and procedures
How far do you go to implement these fault tolerant systems and procedures?
At Therasoft, we have paid very close attention to the sequence of events and read every comment by TherapyNotes and the users. Learning from other mistakes is much better than learning from your own mistakes.
We understand that a Mental Health Practice Management system is very different from a marketing website or a dating website, so we are always committed to implementing extensive security measures, and have been since 2008 when we started development of our systems. We did have an advantage that makes us different - we have extensive experience with large infrastructures and data security. We are committed to not letting our users down, and to always have back-up in the face of disaster.
Please click on the link here or below if you would like more information of how to protect yourself from a disaster similar to the TherapyNotes meltdown.
