August 2022--“I’m here at Dykema’s 2022 Definitive DSO Conference with Patrick Jacobwith, CEO of Sunset Technologies, and they are an incredible organization that provides IT technical support and cybersecurity in all 50 states,” says Amol Nirgudkar, CEO of Patient Prism. “Patrick, tell us how Sunset Technologies started.”
“Brad Kerr is my business partner,” says Jacobwith, “and it started in his garage 15 years ago. He and his wife would sell to dental practices and do IT installations. Brad built the company and brought me in about eight years ago as CEO and general counsel to grow the company nationally. Since then, we have grown from 18 employees to 95.”
Nirgudkar asks, “What problems do you solve for dental offices?”
“The greatest thing we do is focus on the IT and its security, so dental practices can focus on their patients,” Jacobwith responds. “It’s ubiquitous that we take for granted our IT will always be on, always functioning the way it is supposed to, and secure. And security is a huge deal. Over the last 25 months, dental offices have been shut down by ransomware. Extortion is happening, patient data is compromised, and there is tremendous liability for dental offices and DSOs.”
“How do you help DSOs with cyber security?” asks Nirgudkar.
A differentiator for Sunset is that Jacobwith has a personal relationship with the FBI. “I am a member of InfraGard, and that means that we are able to get information on a daily basis about cyber activity,” he says. “We are working with other companies to help the FBI battle cybersecurity and we have on staff people who are considered white hackers.”
Sunset technologies has tremendous horsepower for establishing firewalls, installing antivirus software, monitoring computer networks, and alerting dental practices and DSOs. “We’re a 24/7 shop,” says Jacobwith.
Because some organizations want to do some of their IT infrastructure on their own, they can choose what Sunset does for them. Others want to, like you just said, have us do all of it, and we can mix and match. “If we are not taking care of everything, especially the cyber protection, we make sure we have good agreements in place because there are certain liabilities, especially HIPAA. We want to make sure that those responsibilities are clearly outlined,” says Jacobwith.
“Cyber security is a very small investment to make in your business to have a lot of peace of mind. Not in just terms of threats, but in terms of productivity,” says Nirgudkar.
“We’re able to scan the environment. We do a walk around, take a lot of pictures, and provide a report back to the business on the status of their equipment and their security system, all the different IT components that will help them be productive. We review this with them and then, as a part of HIPAA compliance, we perform the assessment on an annual basis. The first step in cybersecurity and HIPAA compliance is to identify what’s in your environment so you can protect it,” says Jacobwith.
“That’s the simple first step that a lot of people miss. So, we run this assessment tool and then we review it every year and make sure that we’re helping them to build an IT budget, an IT plan. This way, they’re not going to be surprised and suddenly need to reach into their pocket and spend $50,000 that they didn’t expect to spend.”
“Our contact information is there,” says Jacobwith. “You can call us. We would be glad to follow up with you, give you an assessment, give you better information, just look under the hood and tell you what is going on. And from there, we can build a solution that makes sense for you. There is no one size that fits all situations.”