With resources scarce in many rural areas, security leaders struggle to properly protect health systems

Securing health care is an uphill battle with providers balancing the need to drive innovation with simultaneously keeping patients safe from security and privacy risks. But the challenges facing small, rural, and other under-resourced providers are burdensome when many lack the budgets and staff to adequately secure the network.

With gaps in staffing and overall understanding, training programs around cyber could have a large impact to rural health providers, explained Baha Zeidan, founder and CEO of Azalea Health. Many of these hospitals already have ample training around patient privacy.

But providers should take it up another step to train the front desk, billing, and clinical staff on the basics of cybersecurity on an ongoing basis to elevate the cyber posture of the entire organization. Zeidan noted that it should follow similar processes for patient privacy and compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.