| What's in This Issue: | Debt Collectors Find a Home with OmniFund | HIPAA Compliance | Common Tactics of Social Engineers | | |
Debt Collectors Find a Home with OmniFund
For decades, debt collection agencies have endured a nomadic existence in the payment processing space. Collection agencies have always struggled to find payment processors willing to underwrite their high-risk industry.
Thanks to long-standing partnerships, OmniFund is able to offer stable and versatile ACH and card processing for debt collection agencies. With years of experience with the collection industry, OmniFund understands how your business works. OmniFund offers:
- Management Software Integration
- Collections Software Integrations
- Versatile Payment Options for Your Clients
- Security and Compliance
You deserve to work with a payments processor that respects what you do, works with your software, and offers you flexible payment options. Please contact us to set up a personalized consultation to see how OmniFund can help your agency succeed. If you are already an OmniFund client, reach out to us for a rate review.
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HIPAA Compliance
You have probably seen the headlines. A practice using third-party software to provide IT, document handling, or payment services becomes involved in a lawsuit because their external Business Associate fails to protect the HIPAA-defined Personal Health Information (PHI) of their patients. As healthcare professionals become the new favorite targets of ransomware attacks, the risks to your practice have never been higher. While you may have taken steps to protect your practice against direct attacks on your internal systems, HIPAA law holds you directly accountable for every party that has access to this information as well, including external service providers.
According to the HIPAA Journal, "The Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights (OCR) settled 19 HIPAA violation cases in 2020." with settlements totaling $13,554,900.
If any of your business associates generate invoices, run transactions, send receipts, or perform any service that manages, processes or archives Protected Health Information (PHI), your HIPAA chain of compliance could be compromised. You owe it to your practice and your patients to protect the time, effort, and money you have already invested in strengthening your compliance program.
- The failure to perform organization-wide risk analysis relating to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of protected health information (PHI)
- The inability to enter into a HIPAA-compliant business associate agreement (BAA)
- Impermissible disclosures and failure to safeguard PHI
You can take preventative actions against the financial and reputational losses that have impacted many health providers. The most straightforward is to ensure you are doing business with a financial service provider (FSP) that is HIPAA compliant. Many popular FSP's including Stripe, PayPal, Venmo, and Quickbooks, have no plans on becoming HIPAA compliant. Take the time to reach out to your FSP associate to ask about their HIPAA program and request a BAA.
OmniFund offers healthcare providers the tools and technology to operate safely in the world of online payments. Reach out to us today and learn more about how we can partner with you to offer safe, reliable, and convenient payment solutions to you and your patients. Don't let your payment provider be your weakest link!
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Common Tactics of Social Engineers
In his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Dr. Robert Cialdini explores six universal principles of influence that leverage human instincts:
- Scarcity: one's desire to acquire something that has limited supply, increasing its exclusivity.
- Authority: the propensity to say "yes" to authority figures.
- Social Proof: The belief that our decision is correct because others made the same decision.
- Liking: our tendency to agree with people we like or identify with and our desire to be "liked" by them.
- Commitment: the effort people put forth to justify the choices we've made.
- Reciprocity: the willingness to pay people back for help or favors.
Understanding how we each work within those six principles can help us see where we are vulnerable to being manipulated. Social Engineers are experts in this field of psychology through simple practice. They test their methods thousands of times until they figure out what works on specific individuals, roles, personality types, professions, etc. Evidence of their expertise is all around us. We all know someone who has had money or personal data stolen by a scammer, either through a data breach or security compromise. The vast majority of these compromises began with some method of social engineering.
In some cases, Social Engineers impersonated the police, the IRS, or the CEO, to gain access to valuable data. Some Social Engineers warned the victim that they'd been hacked and offered to help recover data that was never actually compromised in exchange for access to valuable data. Social Engineers use these tactics because they work, and they work because we can sometimes be ignorant of their methods and tactics.
As we've shared with you before, computers don't get hacked anymore. People get tricked. For a hacker, it's easier to fool someone with access to valuable data into giving it away than it is to hack a robust security system.
When you receive requests to click on links or send money, check to see if this is a Social Engineer attempting to leverage your human instincts, ask:
- "How logical is this?"
- "Is anything about this scenario different or odd?"
- "What would be the worst possible outcome of taking this action, and how likely is it to occur?"
- "Do I know who this person is?"
If you feel even a small degree of skepticism, don't take any action. Most Social engineering attempts can be thwarted by simply slowing down, thinking critically, and never assuming the contact is who they say they are.
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Why Choose OmniFund?
Our Payments as a Platform® gives customers the advantage of accepting multiple types of payments and simplifies the process, creating a seamless experience. At the same time, we help protect your company from fraud and have the tools and support needed for PCI compliance, tokenization, and P2P encryption. At OmniFund, we are dedicated to your success, providing you with:
- Personalized Support
- Customizable Solutions
- Problem Solving Experts
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OmniFund Payment Solutions
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Are you sure you’re getting the best rates possible on credit card fees?
OmniFund knows each business is unique, therefore so is our pricing model. We offer a free third-party analysis of your current rates, so you can see how much you’re really paying and how we can help you save.
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About OmniFund
Since 1997, the professionals at OmniFund have been providing payment solutions to businesses across the nation ranging in size from large Fortune 500 companies to small mom & pop shops. Headquartered in Tampa, Florida, our Payments as a Platform® keeps your business secure while increasing profits.
We pride ourselves in providing a platform that simplifies the payment process, making it easier to stay compliant with ever-changing regulations. We back our platform with expert service and personalized support. Our goal is to provide you with a comprehensive, easy-to-use, and fully integrated payment solution that allows your business to grow and thrive.
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