Don’t need outsourced IT support? Happy with your in-house IT support? Instead of hiring an MSP (Managed Service Provider) you may consider hiring an MSSP (Managed Service Security Provider) to enhance your existing IT support. A managed security service provider (MSSP) is an IT service provider that provides a medical practice with some amount of cybersecurity monitoring, HIPAA support and management, which may include virus and spam blocking, intrusion detection, firewalls and virtual private network (VPN) management. An MSSP can also handle system changes, modifications and upgrades.
Hiring an MSSP
You may not need all of the services of an MSSP, but I am almost certain you will need some. A large MSSP will purchase licenses for various products at a much larger discounted volume than a single medical practice may want to pay for. We can also help you manage the security tools and alert the IT staff when remediation needs to be done, or when something needs to change in order to protect the network.
At this point, managing cybersecurity in a practice is not a luxury. It’s something you really need to have. This type of management often gets lost in the day to day tickets and issues that come with maintaining a network. It just may be easier to hire an MSSP and not have to worry about what tools to use, how to implement them and how to train them. An MSSP will keep up with all the latest trends and actively protect your network on a daily basis.
When did MSSP’s start?
Good question! MSSP’s have basically evolved. Like anything, when the need is out there, solutions are created. An MSSP saw the need for security and created various packages according to your practice. Do you have remote users, satellite offices, paper charts, medical equipment, wireless networks, external monitoring, internal monitoring, training, etc.? These all fall under the MSSP umbrella. Unfortunately, we cannot prevent users from creating breaches and viruses on your network, but we can certainly make it difficult for them and train them on the “what to do and what not to do” on your network.
Hiring an MSSP is fairly new, yet very important. You may want to consider at least looking into it. Talk to Tier3MD today.