🚨 ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨
VRC Holiday Closure & Support

As we approach Christmas and the New Year, all of us at VanRein Compliance want to say a heartfelt thank you for trusting us with your compliance journey this year. We’re grateful for the opportunity to support your team, safeguard your data, and be part of the important work you do every day.

In observance of the holidays, we will be closed from Tuesday, December 23 through Friday, January 2. We’ll resume normal operations on Monday, January 5.

Any regular standing calls or cadence meetings that fall within this period will be canceled or rescheduled outside the holiday window. Your VRC team will follow up with new times as needed.

If you need urgent assistance while we’re away, you can still reach us through:

• VRC1 chat or email: [email protected]

• Training-related questions/requests: [email protected] 

Wishing you and your team a warm, joyful, and truly restful Christmas and New Year! Thank you for your continued partnership.

Check out VRC’s Christmas Merch Collection now!

Holiday Operations Playbook:
Coverage & Continuity Before Christmas

Sponsored by

Christmas is next week. For most people, it’s a time to slow down, be present with family and friends, and take a real break from the day-to-day grind. But for your operations, it’s also one of the most fragile stretches of the year: people are out for longer, coverage is thin, and issues don’t stop just because the calendar says “holiday.”

This week is your last clean window to get holiday-ready without launching a big new project. Here’s a simple Holiday Operations Playbook you can ship in a day.

1. People & Coverage: Make the Map Visible

Don’t rely on “everyone just knows who’s on call.” Put your coverage map where people can see it.

• Publish your on-call plans and backups. Include primary and backup for each function (IT, security, clinical/operations, vendor contacts), especially across the Christmas–New Year period.

• Add vendor hotlines and a 24/7 contact path. If a critical system goes down, make it obvious how to reach support, including after-hours vendor escalation paths.

• Run a quick paging test. Trigger a simple “test” notification and confirm it actually reaches the right people, on the right channels (call, SMS, app, email).

A 15-minute test now is much easier than figuring out why nobody saw the alert at 11:30 PM on Christmas Eve.

2. Access Hygiene: Tighten High-Risk Roles Before You Log Off

Holiday incidents often get worse because the wrong people have the wrong access at the wrong time.

• Switch standing admin to just-in-time elevation. For admins and power users, use temporary elevation with clear start/expiry and approvals instead of always-on privileges.

• Do a pre-holiday access review. Focus on high-risk roles: IT admins, finance, billing, EHR/PHI users, and cloud platform owners. Remove access that’s no longer needed, and document approvals for what remains.

You don’t have to redesign your identity program in a week, but you can make sure your riskiest access is deliberate and time-bound before everyone checks out for the holidays.

3. Change Windows: Control What Can Break

The week before a major holiday is not the time for ambitious changes.

• Freeze non-urgent changes. Announce a simple holiday change freeze for anything not tied to security or a critical fix.

• Pre-approve emergency changes. Define what counts as “emergency,” and keep:

  • A short approval checklist

  • A clear sign-off path

  • A place to log what changed and why

If you must deploy something over the holiday, it’s not a free-for-all—and you can actually explain it afterwards.

4. Comms Readiness: Know Who Says What, Where

When something breaks during a holiday, clear communication usually matters just as much as fixing the issue.

• Keep message templates in one place. Have internal, customer, and regulator-ready templates in a shared location (status page, email, social).

• Assign comms roles. Decide who:

  • Posts to your status page

  • Sends customer emails

  • Handles social updates

  • Logs what was sent and when

A small amount of prep now saves a lot of confusion later, especially when half the team is traveling or off-grid between Christmas and New Year’s.

5. “Receipts” to Keep on File

Go beyond just doing the right things. You want to be able to show you did them. Keep a small proof pack that includes:

• Your on-call roster PDF covering the holiday period

• A simple call-tree or escalation diagram

• A few approval records for just-in-time elevation

• A paging test screenshot or log

• A link to your comms templates and change-freeze announcement

If leadership, a regulator, or a customer ever asks, you can show that you went into the holidays with a plan, not crossed fingers.

From Outline to Operating Rhythm

VanRein Compliance helps you turn this outline into a working Holiday Operations Playbook. “HOP” into the holidays and new year with clear roles, steps, and tidy evidence you can hand to leadership or auditors.

• Ship a real Holiday Operations Playbook, fast. We help you turn this outline into a working plan with clear owners, steps, and communication paths before the Christmas break.

• Package the “receipts” leadership expects. We organize your rosters, approvals, tests, and templates into simple proof packs you can show to executives, customers, or auditors.

Meet you where you are. Whether you’re just formalizing your first playbook or refining a mature program, we focus on practical next steps you can take this week—not a future “someday” overhaul.

Earn a Quieter Christmas

The goal isn’t perfection before the holiday, it’s intention. By spending a little time this week to map coverage, tighten high-risk access, freeze non-essential changes, and line up clear communications (with a few “receipts” to prove it), you give your organization something incredibly valuable: a calmer Christmas and smoother start to the new year. Incidents may still happen, but they’ll land in a system that’s ready for them, with the right people on point and a plan everyone recognizes.

Book a Discovery Call now and we’ll map a quick Holiday Readiness check-in into your existing engagement or get you started with a focused playbook you can use all year.

Home for the Holidays: A Christmas-Ready Checklist for Work on the Go

With Christmas and New Year coming up, a lot of “just a quick check-in” work is about to happen on home Wi-Fi, family iPads, and laptops tossed into carry-ons. That doesn’t have to mean more risk, if you tune a few basics before people sign off for the break.

Here’s a plain-English checklist you can roll out in about 15 minutes per person.

1. Lock Down Home Wi-Fi (and Guest Access)

Most holiday work will happen on home and relatives’ networks, not office-grade infrastructure.

Make sure:

• Routers use WPA2/WPA3 and a strong password. No default network names or passwords.

• Guest networks are used for visitors. Keep work devices on the primary network; put guest phones, TVs, and random gadgets on a separate SSID.

• Admin panels aren’t wide open. Change default router admin logins and disable remote administration if you don’t need it.

A few minutes on the router now is worth far more than a “we think it was on home Wi-Fi” after an incident.

2. Shared Devices: Keep Work Accounts Separate

Over the holidays, devices tend to float with kids on tablets, relatives borrowing laptops, logins left open “just for a minute.” That "minute" can add a lot of hum-bug to the holiday.

Set a few simple rules:

• No shared logins on work devices. Each person uses their own account with a password, PIN, or biometric.

• No work accounts on truly shared family devices. If that’s unavoidable, use separate browser profiles and always log out when you’re done.

• Auto-lock turned on everywhere. Short screen-lock timers on laptops, tablets, and phones—think minutes, not half-hours.

The goal: it should be hard for someone else to accidentally stumble into PHI, customer data, or admin tools.

3. Data & AI Use: Keep Sensitive Info in the Right Place

If your team handles PHI or other sensitive personal data, keep the Christmas guidance simple and firm:

• Minimize local files. Favor approved cloud apps instead of downloading PHI or reports to local disks.

• Use only sanctioned apps and storage. No new “free tools,” personal USB drives, or random browser extensions just because you’re away from the office.

• Never paste PHI into unapproved AI tools. Any AI use must go through approved, governed channels.

You don’t need a new, long policy for this. A short reminder email with a couple of examples before the break often does the job.

4. “If Something Happens” Plan: Make It Obvious

Assume at least one device will be lost, stolen, or obviously compromised over the holidays.

Give everyone a simple, shared escalation plan:

• Who to contact. A single help-desk or security email/number.

• What to say. Device type, last known location, and whether PHI or sensitive data might be involved.

• What you’ll do next. Remote wipe, password resets, MFA resets, and logging the event.

When people know exactly what to do, they’re far more likely to report quickly—which is often the difference between a close call and a real incident.

5. Small but Mighty Proof Pack

As with your broader Holiday Operations Playbook, keep light evidence that you actually ran this campaign:

• A few screenshots of device and Wi-Fi settings (encryption, updates, screen lock).

• Help-desk ticket IDs for any pre-holiday changes you made.

• A short internal checklist or email showing you shared this guidance with staff.

If a customer, insurer, or auditor asks how you handled holiday remote work risk, you’ll have more than “we reminded people to be careful.”

VRC: Your Holiday Remote Work Partner

VanRein Compliance helps make holiday and remote-work security routine—not a December fire drill. We can help you:

• Design a short, repeatable holiday security campaign for home Wi-Fi, shared devices, and travel.

• Align your checklist with your existing policies and frameworks (HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO, HITRUST, and state privacy requirements).

Build simple templates and proof packs so your team can show, not just tell, that they did the work.

Travel and Work With Confidence, Not Guesswork

You don’t need a massive new program to make Christmas and New Year safer. You just need a few habits your whole team can follow. When home Wi-Fi is locked down, shared devices are set up thoughtfully, sensitive data stays in approved tools, and everyone knows exactly what to do if something goes wrong, “work on the go” doesn’t have to mean “security held together with crossed fingers.”

Partner with VanRein Compliance and we can fold holiday remote-work security into your existing roadmap—so your people can unplug with more confidence, and you can head into January knowing the basics are truly covered.

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