Why Having an SSL Certificate on Your Medical Website is Paramount

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Why Having an SSL Certificate on Your Medical
Website is Paramount
When it comes to medical website design and
development, you need to factor in patient data
protection and site security. There are many
reasons why you need medical website protection
and site security thats covered by an SSL
security certificate, not the least of which are
hackers. Unfortunately, hackers are extremely
interested in patients health details such as
addresses, phone numbers, email addresses,
financial data and social security numbers. The
entire healthcare industry has become a target
for cyberattacks. A recent report called Beyond
Compliance Cyber Threats and Healthcare from
FireEye revealed just how opportunistic most
cyberattacks are. This report revealed that most
cyberattacks occur mainly because healthcare
providers fail to address exploitable
vulnerabilities in their digital defenses, and
they end up losing massive amounts of critical
data. According to another report from 2018,
100 of all web applications that are connected
to vital health data are now vulnerable to
cybersecurity breaches. As a result, the
healthcare industry is not protected, and neither
are medical websites. You need to take the
necessary steps to secure your website by
providing both website protection and patient
data protection. How to make a website
secure? How do you protect your healthcare
website from data breaches? The easiest answer is
a simple security protocol called an SSL security
certificate. SSL stands for secure socket
layer. An SSL security certificate is a
significant companion for your medical website
because it
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• Provides HIPAA compliance
• Builds patient trust
• Increases website conversion rates
• Enhances payment card industry (PCI) compliance
• Boosts your ranking in search engine results
  pages (SERP)
• ?
• What is an SSL security certificate?
• A secure socket layer certificate is a digital
  certificate that authenticates the identity of
  your website and enables an encrypted link
  between web servers and web browsers. An SSL
  certificate secures online transactions and
  provides patient data protection. It prevents
  cyber criminals from modifying, reading or
  stealing information as it is transferred between
  connections.
• Users can easily identify websites with SSL
  certificates by looking at their URL structure.
  When you install an SSL certificate, your
  websites URL begins with https instead of
  simply http. A website without an SSL
  certificate will have a URL beginning with http.
  Users also look for a little padlock icon next to
  the address bar. Those websites protected by the
  certificate will have the padlock icon right next
  to their address.
• Search engines typically warn users about
  unsecure websites. Sites with SSL receive the
  most visits by far, according to Googles
  Transparency Report. It shows that 93.2 of
  browsing time on Google Chrome was spent on
  websites with SSL website protection.
• The SSL certificate has been in use since its
  inception in 1994. When older SSL versions ran
  into security problems, a revamped, more advanced
  SSL certificate version known as Transport Layer
  Security (TLS) was introduced and is still used
  today.
• 5 Reasons Why Your Medical Website Needs an SSL
  Certificate

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• Here are the top five reasons/benefits for having
  an SSL certificate on your medical website
• HIPAA Compliance
• HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability
  and Accountability Act of 1996. HIPAA requires
  that each organization handling patients data
  must protect those data and prevent them from
  being disclosed to third parties without a
  patients consent.
• Today, most medical websites have Contact Us
  pages. Patients use these pages to contact
  providers and make appointments. Patients provide
  personal details such as names, physical
  addresses, email addresses and phone numbers,
  along with details about their appointments that
  might include their symptoms and potential
  illnesses.
• To satisfy HIPAA, all communications between your
  website servers and the users browsers must be
  encrypted. By encrypting this data, you will
  ensure that, even if a determined intruder
  succeeds in accessing patient information, they
  cannot alter it.
• Building Patient Trust
• During the last decade, weve seen a tremendous
  surge in the number of fake websites. Fake health
  websites try to extort money from unsuspecting
  victims and steal their most sensitive personal
  information. This trend has led to mistrust in
  medical websites and the Internet in general.
  Patients no longer blindly trust medical websites
  unless they can easily prove their legitimacy,
  security and validity. And nothing inspires trust
  and confidence in your medical website like an
  SSL certificate.
• Increasing Your Website Conversion Rates

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• One of the main reasons you need a website is to
  retain your current patients while engaging and
  acquiring new ones. To maximize your return on
  investment and increase conversions, you will
  need to display trust indicators on your site. An
  SSL security certificate is the perfect trust
  indicator for increasing your conversion rates.
• Most patients will confirm whether your website
  has an SSL certificate before submitting their
  personal information and health details. If your
  medical website lacks an SSL certificate, your
  prospective patients will turn to competitors in
  search of SSL-protected websites they can trust.
  Think of an SSL certificate as an inexpensive way
  to increase your conversion rates. Note that
  medical websites that have multiple subdomains do
  not need an SSL certificate for each subdomain. A
  single wildcard SSL certificate is sufficient to
  help you secure an unlimited number of
  subdomains.
• Enhancing Payment Card Industry (PCI) Compliance
• If, at some point, you need to sell medical
  products, medical devices or specialized
  treatment services from your medical website, you
  may need to accept payments from patients via
  Visa, Mastercard, Discover or American Express.
• The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
  (PCI-DSS) offers guidelines to help you protect
  against breaches and cardholder identity thefts.
  If you want to adhere to these guidelines, you
  will need an SSL certificate for your medical
  website. That certificate will also encrypt all
  credit and debit card information. Noncompliance
  with the PCI-DSS could lead to fines and
  penalties.
• Boosting Your Search Engine Results

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Search engines care a great deal about the
well-being of your website visitors. They want to
ensure your visitors are protected from identity
theft and data losses. Thats why only secure
websites will ever appear on the first pages of
search engines like Google. So, if you want your
medical website to rank high in search results,
you must install an SSL certificate. Dont take
unnecessary chances with your site security and
patient data protection. Take the proper security
measures to protect your medical website against
cyberattacks. Your best security protocol is an
SSL security certificate. Make sure that your
medical website design and development team
includes SSL for website protection and site
security. Learn how to make a website secure by
reaching out to us at practicebuilders.com or
calling 833-364-0793.