Risk

7 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Risk Management Plan

Over 5,000 fatal workplace injuries were recorded in 2017. It’s why a risk management plan is essential to employee safety.

Even with a risk management plan, injuries can still occur in the workplace. But a risk management plan helps reduce any potential danger to employees.

A risk management plan is having a plan to avoid dangerous risks in the workplace. There is an emphasis on protecting the employee, the undertaking project, and the entire business.

One of the most important reasons for risk management is to protect customers and your brand. If your customers feel safe buying from your business, it creates a lifelong customer.

If you don’t have a risk management plan for your business, consider these 7 most important reasons why your business needs one.

1. Have a Contingency Budget

A risk management plan is not always about employee safety. It’s also about budgeting on unforeseen circumstances.

Business needs to stay within a budget on projects. A risk management plan assesses how likely a project will go over budget or the cost if a part of that project breaks.

A contingency budget is preparing for the cost of damages. Managers need to figure out how much to put aside in case a project does extend beyond its budget or if something goes awry.

2. Increase Return of Investment

Risk management also increases your return on investment in the workplace. As a business, you can reduce the risk of losing profit by preparing for unforeseen circumstances.

Risk management ensures that a project is finished on time. But it also assesses how much profit is lost if the project extends past the deadline, goes over budget, or if something breaks.

Every business wants to know how to make a profit with the products and people they are investing in. Bv lowering the risk of how long it takes to complete a project, the business is increasing its return of investment.

3. More Consistent and Efficient Workplace

People are the most important part of the workplace. When you eliminate potential danger and increase safety measures, employees work more efficiently. Projects are completed on time.

Risk management is concerned with employee safety. They want to create an environment where the employee and the customer feel safe. But risk management also looks at every system in the organization and sees if there is any risk that could damage the relationship with the customer.

An example would be if a company relies on a key instrument from a specific source. The company now is at risk because if the specific source dries up, that company is at risk of losing profit and, worse, the customer.

4. More Satisfied Customers

Customers are the lifeblood of a business. When you have happier customers, you create lifelong customers who believe in how your business operates.

Risk management helps create an efficient and safe workplace that gives the customer a better experience and product.

But this is why risk needs to be identified in how it takes a customer to get a product and what pitfalls exist from a person first seeing a business to that person becoming a lifelong customer.

5. It Clarifies Roles

Creating roles in the workplace avoids confusion among employees. There is less confusion if a problem arises and who’s supposed to report to who.

When everyone works together and understands their role, it creates efficiency in the workplace.

Everyone knows who to report to and what their assigned roles are on a project. There’s less risk of a project falling apart because everyone knows what to do within their roles.

Examples of roles can be board members, the CEO, and the Operations Group that implements plans.

The board must create policies and an appropriate risk management system. The CEO must ensure that these policies are executed.

You can find more information on this security consultant and how it helps your business reduce risk.

6. Employees Know What to Do in Emergency Situations

A business needs to know what to do in case of an emergency situation.

Risk management helps to assess if it’s a minor or major emergency and what employees of the company need to do.

There should be a management or response plan in case of an emergency disaster. It can help mitigate loss and prevent injury to employees.

An emergency plan can help prepare employees on what to do.

Risk management can also help your business change strategy if they think there is a major risk that could hurt the business.

7. A Healthier Business Brand

Every business has a story to tell its customers. It’s the brand of the business.

A risk management team helps a business tell its story. They help ensure that your business is staying compliant, and is implementing proper security measures.

Risk management also makes sure you are staying within a budget on projects and other costs. They make sure that you have a safety net in case something goes wrong.

While risk management is there to maintain employee safety, it’s also just as concerned about customer safety.

If a customer slips and falls and blames your business, your brand may take a hit. You may lose profit. You may have legal issues.

These are issues that risk management is there for, protecting your brand and your customers.

A Risk Management Plan Prepares for Success

A risk management plan is about preparing for intentional success. Businesses who hire risk management companies want to eliminate any risk that can hurt their business.

Identifying risk in a business is about being aware of the pitfalls that can hurt customer relationships. It’s about creating a system that takes your customer from A to Z seamlessly. It’s not just about having a product released as quickly as possible so your customers can be happy.

It’s about creating a business system that’s built on backup budgeting, employee safety, and ultimately a business brand.

You can find more information on risk management on our website.

Take Security into Your Own Hands and get a HIPAA Risk Assessment

If your organization handles protected health information, or PHI, The Department of Health and Human Services requires you to conduct a risk analysis as the first step toward implementing safeguards specified in the HIPAA Security Rule, and ultimately achieving HIPAA compliance.

This includes all HIPAA hosting providers.

But what does a risk analysis entail exactly? And what must absolutely be included in your report?

The Health and Human Services Security Standards Guide outlines nine mandatory components of a risk analysis.

Conducting a thorough HIPAA risk assessment is extremely difficult to do yourself, though. You may well want to contract with a HIPAA auditor to help you.

Most people simply don’t know where to look, or they end up bypassing things because they don’t understand data security.

If the risk analysis is foundational to your security, then you don’t want to overlook key elements in the analysis.

There are nine components that healthcare organizations and healthcare-related organizations that store or transmit electronic protected health information must include in their document:

1. Scope of the Analysis

To identify your scope – in other words, the areas of your organization you need to secure – you have to understand how patient data flows within your organization.

This includes all electronic media your organization uses to create, receive, maintain or transmit ePHI – portable media, desktops and networks.

There are four main parts to consider when defining your scope.

• Where PHI starts or enters your environment.
• What happens to it once it’s in your system.
• Where PHI leaves your entity.
• Where the potential or existing leaks are.

2. Data Collection

Below is a list of places to get you started in the documentation of where PHI enters your environment.

• Email: How many computers do you use, and who can log on to each of them?
• Texts: How many mobile devices are there, and who owns them?
• EHR entries: How many staff members are entering in data?
• Faxes: How many fax machines do you have?
• USPS: How is incoming mail handled?
• New patient papers: How many papers are patients required to fill out? Do they do this at the front desk? Examination room? Somewhere else?
• Business associate communications: How do business associates communicate with you?
• Databases: Do you receive marketing databases of potential patients to contact?

It’s not enough to know only where PHI begins. You also need to know where it goes once it enters your environment.

To fully understand what happens to PHI in your environment, you have to record all hardware, software, devices, systems, and data storage locations that touch PHI in any way.

And then what happens when PHI leaves your hands? It is your job to ensure that it is transmitted or destroyed in the most secure way possible.

Once you know all the places where PHI is housed, transmitted, and stored, you’ll be better able to safeguard those vulnerable places.

Identify and Document Potential Vulnerabilities and Threats

Once you know what happens during the PHI lifecycle, it’s time to look for the gaps. These gaps create an environment for unsecured PHI to leak in or outside your environment.

The best way to find all possible leaks is to create a PHI flow diagram that documents all the information you found above and lays it out in a graphical format.

Looking at a diagram makes it easier to understand PHI trails and to identify and document anticipated vulnerabilities and threats.

A vulnerability is a flaw in components, procedures, design, implementation, or internal controls. Vulnerabilities can be fixed.

Some examples of vulnerabilities:

• Website coded incorrectly
• No office security policies
• Computer screens in view of public patient waiting areas

A threat is the potential for a person or thing to trigger a vulnerability. Most threats remain out of your control to change, but they must be identified in order to assess the risk.

Some examples of threats:

• Geological threats, such as landslides, earthquakes, and floods
• Hackers downloading malware onto a system
• Actions of workforce members or business associates

Again, even if you’re above-average in terms of compliance, you may only have a minimal understanding of vulnerabilities and threats. It’s crucial to ask a professional for help with your HIPAA risk assessment.

Assess Current Security Measures

Ask yourself what kind of security measures you’re taking to protect your data.

From a technical perspective, this might include any encryption, two-factor authentication, and other security methods put in place by your HIPAA hosting provider.

Since you now understand how PHI flows in your organization, and can better understand your scope. With that understanding, you can identify the vulnerabilities, the likelihood of threat occurrence and the risk.

Determine the Likelihood of Threat Occurrence

Just because there is a threat doesn’t mean it will have an impact on you.

For example, an organization in Florida and an organization in New York technically could both be hit by a hurricane. However, the likelihood of a hurricane hitting Florida is a lot higher than New York. So, the Florida-based organization’s tornado risk level will be a lot higher than the New York-based organization.

Determine the Potential Impact of Threat Occurrence

What effect would a particular risk you are analyzing have on your organization?

For example, while a patient in the waiting room might accidentally see PHI on a computer screen, it more than likely won’t have nearly the impact that a hacker attacking your unsecured Wi-Fi and stealing all your patient data would.

By using either qualitative or quantitative methods, you will need to assess the maximum impact of a data threat to your organization.

Determine the Level of Risk

Risks are the probability that a particular threat will exercise a particular vulnerabilit and the resulting impact on your organization.

According to the HHS, “risk is not a single factor or event, but rather it is a combination of factors or events (threats and vulnerabilities) that, if they occur, may have an adverse impact on the organization.”

So let’s break down the whole vulnerability, threat and risk connection. Here’s an example:

Let’s say that your system allows weak passwords. The vulnerability is the fact that a weak password is vulnerable to attack. The threat then is that a hacker could easily crack that weak password and break into the system. The risk would be the unprotected PHI in your system.

All risks should be assigned a level and accompanied by a list of corrective actions that would be performed to mitigate risk.

Finalize Documentation

Armed with the prioritized list of all your security problems, it’s time to start mitigating them. Starting with the top-ranked risks first, identify the security measure that fixes those issues.

Write everything up in an organized document. There is no specific format required, but the HHS does require the analysis in writing.

Technically, once you’ve documented all the steps you’ll take, you’re done with the risk analysis.

Periodic Review and Updates to the Risk Assessment

It’s important to remember that the risk analysis process is never truly done since it’s ongoing.

One requirement includes conducting a risk analysis on a regular basis. And while the Security Rule doesn’t set a required timeline, you’ll want to conduct another risk analysis whenever your company implements or plans to adopt new technology or business operations.

The bottom line is – a risk analysis is foundational to your security. You simply can’t be HIPAA compliant without one. If you have any tips you’d like to share, we’re all ears.