As a mental health professional, do you have security on your mind?
If you run your own mental health practice, then digital security needs to be a significant focus of your business. Every day, your clients are sharing the details of their private lives and mental health with you, and all of that information goes directly into your clinical notes. Keeping that sensitive information secure needs to be priority #1. Client names, financial records, and clinical notes must adhere to the strictest security compliance.
When we spoke with therapists in the early days of developing Owl Practice, the thing we heard, again and again was the importance of protecting their clients’ personal health information. It was foremost on their list when looking for a digital practice management solution. That feedback is precisely why digital compliance is built right into Owl’s DNA. Here are some of the ways we protect your practice’s most sensitive and valuable data.
We Keep Canadian Data on Canadian Servers
Do you have any idea where your personal emails are stored for services like Gmail? How about all of the content on your website? Chances are that information is stored on an American server somewhere. While it’s likely secure “enough”, it’s out of your hands and out of the country.
That’s definitely not the case with the data you store using Owl Practice. All of our servers are located right here in Canada—Montreal and Toronto, to be precise! As a result of our server locations, Owl must be fully PHIPA and college compliant. With Owl, you never have to worry about foreign entities with less stringent privacy laws getting access to your data because it’s all stored right here in Canada where no one else can get to it.
Moreover, with Owl none of your data will ever be stored directly on any of your devices. That should be a massive relief at border crossings, where officials are increasingly demanding that phones be unlocked and examined to enter or exit the country. There is no danger of your practice’s data being compromised because there won’t be a bit of it on any of your portable devices.
Bank-Level Encryption
Of course, it doesn’t matter where your data is stored if it isn’t secure.
It seems like every day, we hear terrifying tales about hacks that entirely compromise a person’s life. Health records, business documents, and other sensitive information are regularly released on the dark web. In this kind of environment, how can you be sure that your practice’s data will be secure?
At Owl Practice, we use bank-level encryption (SSL) to encrypt all data that moves between our dedicated servers and your devices or browser. This level of encryption guarantees that hackers or any other nefarious parties won’t intercept your data.
Protection from Data Loss
It’s difficult to imagine a bigger blow to a practice than losing all of their client data. Can you imagine the horror???
If you’ve ever experienced a hard drive crash, then you know the pain of losing all of your photos and personal documents. Even if you take the damaged hard drive to professionals who can extract the data, much of it might be unrecoverable. That’s why you should always have a secure backup for your computer, whether it be in the cloud or on a local network drive.
However, when it comes to Owl Practice, you don’t have to worry about a thing. On our servers, we practice continuous backups. If the unimaginable was ever to happen, and one of our servers experienced a complete data loss, everything would be safely backed up on our other server. That’s the peace of mind we give our clients with Owl Practice. We want you to know that your data is being taken care of by professionals who are taking every precaution to make sure nothing will ever happen to it!
At Owl Practice, we pride ourselves on our understanding of the unique needs of Canadian mental health practitioners. We’ve worked hard to create a digital practice management solution that provides therapists just like you with everything they need to run their business. And that definitely includes comprehensive data security and full digital compliance!
If you’re interested in seeing our security measures firsthand, we invite you to book a 14-day free trial or book a demo today. And if you have any questions or comments about our services, please contact us at support@owlpractice.ca.
As Always,
Practice Wisely
