As you may be aware through the news, firsthand experience, your colleagues, our newsletters, EMR vendors and recently from OntarioMD, cybercriminals have taken a keen interest in the Canadian Health Care sector.
BlueBird has made this a top priority and we are taking a proactive approach to combat these cybercriminals. In the past six months we have invested a significant amount of capital, time, staff training, and resources to develop, implement and put in place tools and practices to safeguards your systems and networks against these threats. Many of you whom we felt were at greater risk have already been contacted by our teams and measures have been taken and are in place to protect you. Those who have not been directly contacted have still received upgrades and further improvements to combat these cyber criminals.
Our fight against cybercriminals however does not stop here. We have gone one step further by engaging and working closely with our EMR partners to share information on how we can better protect you. That is not all! BlueBird has taken the initiative to partner with ‘Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre’ (CCIRC). The CCIRC is a government organization specifically designed to protect Canadians against these Cyber Criminals. Jointly, BlueBird and the CCIRC will be sharing information, tools, resources and knowledge on combating and defending our networks against cyber threats. This process will not only be in the interest of our clients, but all Canadians who may be directly or indirectly impacted by these new forms of criminal activities. Again, we are very proud and feel very fortunate that the CCIRC has taken interest in BlueBird and that we are able to play a small, yet important, role in further enabling the CCIRC to protect our country and its citizens.
As you can see, the BlueBird team is working hard to safeguard your networks. However thwarting cybercriminals needs to be a combined effort by all of us and your involvement is also needed. To learn more about what these threats are and how to protect yourselves from cybercriminals you can refer in this month’s newsletter article “How to protect your clinic from ransomware” OntarioMD has also circulated a detailed bulletin via email with the subject “Ransomware threatens health care industries”. We strongly suggest that you read it. If you have not received this document you can view it on our news section of our website.
Many of you have colleagues, family and friends using EMRs. Whether they are using a local solution (server) or ASP (cloud) they are still vulnerable to ransomware and other security threats. We encourage you to share our newsletters, security articles, and safety tips with them and their IT Providers. Let them know we are working with the CCIRC and if they have been victimized or have concerns, whether they have IT representation or not, we would be happy to speak with them. If you have any questions on what we are doing or can do further to protect your IT infrastructure and data, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are here for you!
Lastly, we would like to thank all of our clients and partners who have placed their trust in our organization! We are very grateful that you allow us to continue doing what we love!
Sincerely,
John Solomos
President & CEO