Security might not be a popular topic around the office, but it is an important one—especially if you’re in the benefits industry.

By nature, the PHI that is handled—from Social Security numbers to medical information—makes HR and healthcare extremely attractive targets for cyber hackers. Handling this sensitive data means HR administrators need to ensure they’re making data security a priority within their organization. It’s HR’s job to protect your people – that includes protecting their most personal information.

According to Forbes, more than 112 million records were compromised in 2015 as a result of 253 healthcare breaches that affected 500 individuals or more each. That’s alarming enough – but worse, signs show that the trend isn’t slowing down. Its statistics like these that help underscore the importance of data security and keeping our clients' sensitive benefits information secure.

However, it might surprise you to know that the biggest risk to your data is not the technology that stores it, but rather the humans behind it. It's true! According to a study by Titus, human error plays a role in 84% of organizational incidents related to security breaches! That’s why we take the security of your information seriously. We take extra steps to ensure data is locked down:

• Encrypted data at rest
• Multi-factor full disk encryption on all computers
• No use of thumb drives to store potentially sensitive data
• Frequent password resets requiring a password that hasn’t been used recently
• Utilization of Virtual Private Network for remote and traveling employees

Those are guaranteed 24/7, 365 days a year. This month, however, we have taken security awareness a step further and declared August as Businessolver Security Awareness Month. While data security doesn’t sound like fun, we’ve found ways to make the grind into a game! Throughout the month, we’ve made security education a priority by:

• Requiring each and every employee to go through security awareness and HIPAA training, with bonus incentives and prizes
• Hosting lunch-and-learn training activities about security awareness
• Diving into different kinds of breaches in the healthcare industry, identifying what went wrong, and strategizing on how we can be better
• Gamifying security (in true Businessolver fashion!) with some friendly competition amongst employees in the form of security knowledge contests

By launching employee security awareness efforts prior to annual enrollment, we ensure that our employees are all focused on the right thing—keeping your data safe and secure. Annual enrollment can be a hectic time for employers and benefits administrators alike, but it’s important to keep the focus on protecting what matters most to you and your employees—personal data.

We know that you put a lot of trust in your benefits administration technology partner to protect sensitive benefits data – information that your employees trust you to keep safe. A data breach not only impacts the bottom line, but it impacts employee trust and your brand reputation.

What are you doing within your company to create a security-minded culture? What is your partner doing to stay on top of security and keep your data safe and out of the headlines?