Come April 8th, 2014, Windows will stop supporting their 12 year old operating system, meaning that it will no longer receive security updates, and therefore not comply with HIPAA regulations. For those of you who are concerned with the liability that comes with being non-compliant (Read our previous blog article “The Misconceptions of HIPAA” for more information about what this liability entails.), it is time to begin looking at a game plan to upgrade your software, and possibly some of your hardware to ensure everything can run properly and efficiently.
What Does the Upgrade Process Look Like?
Many of you may be using XP on machines that are running proprietary software for a number of reasons specific to your industry. Moving forward, the first step you will want to take is to contact your vendors to figure out what is necessary to upgrade the software to be compatible with a newer version of Windows. The next step will be to analyze your current work station computers; do they need an upgrade in order to run the newer versions of Windows? By ensuring that your systems are up to date you can effectively increase your level of security, as well as provide your employees with a computing environment that will make them more efficient in their day-to-day operations.
The Take Away
While April is still a few months out, it is in your interest to begin this process now. By carefully planning out how you will upgrade any machine that is on XP, as well as ensuring that the hardware in the machine can run a newer operating system (it may even be necessary to replace machines that are currently on XP to save money), and the proprietary software is upgraded to a version that will work with Windows 7 or 8, you can avoid the liability risk of being non-compliant with HIPAA. Perhaps even more so, you can avoid that last minute scrambling that often causes you to spend more money than if the migration was properly planned from the beginning. We want to help you make this transition as easy as possible, call us today and ask to speak with your Fuse Technician about designing a game plan for your migration.
