Looking For The Best Wireless Networking Solution For Your Dental Practice?

Technology plays a huge part in dental practices today — from imaging to billing and information security. Advanced wireless collaboration allows for the immediate viewing of digital images, and there has never been a more exciting time to be in the dental industry. Patients appreciate that they’re able to expedite their visit to the dentist while dental associates are delighted that they’re able to provide a higher quality of care due to immediate access to high-quality imaging and thorough notes. Ensuring that your wireless networking for dentists and other technology platforms are aligned with your business can be a challenge unless you’re working with IT professionals who are familiar with the dental industry.

What Kinds of Wireless Networks Are Secure Enough for Dental Practices?

Protecting the privacy of your patients begins with offering a robust, integrated and fully-compliant wireless networking system. There are unique requirements around wireless networking security dental practices need to keep in mind. This is especially important when you consider the amount of PHI (Personal Health Information) that is stored within your building and offsite data storage facilities.

Connecting your wireless laptops with a vast array of medical Internet of Things (IoT) devices is a challenge that needs to be carefully scoped in order to be successful. HIPAA requirements are particularly stringent for the medical arena, making it especially important to ensure that you work with IT services professionals who are highly versed in government compliance requirements. Unfortunately, there is no right to answer what wireless networking for dentists looks like — another reason to be incredibly choosy when you are vetting your IT services partner.

Dangers of Poor Network Security Structure

Good defensive computing requirements are particularly important in the medical field. Many dental, orthodontic or other oral care offices offer free WiFi connections for their guests. This seems like a friendly and hospitable action to take that can help guests maintain their patience while waiting; however, there is a dark side. There are any number of problems that you could encounter when setting up your office WiFi, and they’re much more invasive than simply finding that employees are using the free WiFi to stream Netflix instead of working. Some of the problems that commonly occur when setting up an open WiFi network include:

  • Enabling WPS, which is considered a security disaster
  • Allowing guest users to log into your router
  • Using common network usernames such as “admin” for router IDs or other platforms
  • Allowing guests to view each other within the spectrum of the network

If you find any of these problems with your wireless networking for dentists set up, contact a professional IT services organization immediately to learn how to protect your office and your patients.

Providing Control to Network Administrators

Depending on the size of your office, you may have a network administrator who is pulled in a variety of different directions. This can make focusing on maintaining the highest level of security difficult if not impossible to control. It is critical that you create and maintain network infrastructure and systems that allow your network administrator to have full control over the sensitive systems and data within your business. This means everything from the ability to remotely disable a username when an employee leaves your practice to having the time and access to apply software patches in a timely manner. If your dental practice has several different software platforms in use, this can become increasingly challenging without a clear strategy and roadmap for security and support.

Why Are Data Backups Important for Dental Practices?

Have you ever stopped to think how long it would take for you to re-create the information captured in a single day of work? The highly-detailed data points that are gathered in a dental or medical practice are difficult if not impossible to recreate. If your wireless networking is not properly configured, it’s quite possible that a hacker could get into your systems and wreak havoc on your sensitive and timely information. Creating a proactive data backup and recovery procedure provides you with an added level of peace of mind that your data is secure and accessible even in the event of an emergency.

Protecting your patients and their confidential personal and financial information is every bit as important as caring for their oral health. When you partner with a trusted partner to create a secure wireless network, you are showing your patients that you are willing to make an additional commitment to their care.