As the person in charge of your healthcare organization’s information technology, one of your responsibilities is protecting patients’ and clients’ information. This can be difficult because third-party vendors with whom you contract can unwittingly jeopardize the security of that information. But you can take steps today to help prevent those problems tomorrow.

The inability to adequately assess and understand the risks that vendors pose is becoming incredibly costly to healthcare providers, according to a report released today by Censinet and the Ponemon Institute.