🚨 ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨
Thanksgiving Office Hours

As we head into Thanksgiving, all of us at VanRein Compliance want to say a heartfelt thank you for trusting us with your compliance journey. 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 Thanksgiving holiday, VanRein Compliance will be closed from Wednesday through Friday, November 26-28.

We’ll resume normal operations on Monday, December 1. If you have an urgent concern during this time, please email [email protected] and our team will respond as soon as possible.

Holiday Operations Playbook:
Coverage & Continuity Before Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is next week. It’s a moment for slowing down, being present with family and friends, and taking a real break from the day-to-day grind. But for your operations, it’s also one of the most fragile weeks of the year: people are out, 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).

• 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 Thanksgiving.

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, 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.

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

That way, 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.

5. “Receipts” to Keep on File

You don’t just want to do 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

• 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 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 Thanksgiving hits.

• 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 Thanksgiving

The goal isn’t perfection before the holiday. It’s the 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 Thanksgiving.

Book a Discovery Call now and we’ll map a quick Holiday Readiness check-in into your existing engagement.

Travel-Secure Laptops & Phones:
A Holiday Checklist

With Thanksgiving next week, a lot of work is about to move to airport lounges, relatives’ houses, and hotel Wi-Fi. That doesn’t have to mean more risk if you tune a few basics before people travel.

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

1. Set the Baseline (15 Minutes Per Device)

Make sure every laptop and phone that might touch work is set up with:

• Full-disk encryption turned on. So a lost or stolen device isn’t an instant data incident.

• Automatic updates enabled. Especially for OS and browser.

• Short screen-lock timers. Think minutes, not half-hours especially on mobile.

• Safer Wi-Fi behavior. Avoid auto-joining public networks; use a VPN when off trusted networks.

These small defaults make it much harder for a casual loss or quick theft to turn into a full-blown breach.

2. MFA That Still Works When You’re Traveling

The best time to find out that your MFA method doesn’t work while roaming is not when you’re already locked out.

• Set up offline MFA codes or backup options. Recovery codes, authenticator apps, or security keys that don’t depend on SMS in a low-signal area.

• Test login before travel. Have users log in from a non-office network to confirm everything behaves as expected.
  

3. Extra Care for PHI and Personal Data

If your team handles Protected Health Information (PHI) or other sensitive personal data, set a clear, simple rule of thumb:

• Minimize local files. Use your approved cloud apps instead of storing PHI or personal data on the device wherever possible.

• Use only approved apps and storage. No improvising with personal drives, free tools, or random browser extensions.

• Never paste PHI into unapproved AI tools. If you use AI at all, it must be through approved, governed channels.

You don’t need a 40-page policy to deliver this message. A two-sentence reminder with examples often does the job.

4. “If Lost” Card: Don’t Make People Guess

Assume at least one laptop or phone will get misplaced over the holidays.

Give every traveler a quick “If this device is lost” card with:

• Who to call or email (help desk or security contact)

• What to say (device type, last known location, whether PHI or customer data might be on it)

• The basic remote-wipe steps your team will take next

When people know exactly what to do, they’re much more likely to report quickly which can be the difference between a close call and a real incident.

5. A Small but Mighty Proof Pack

As with your operations playbook, keep simple evidence that you did the work:

• A few device settings screenshots (encryption, screen lock, updates)

• Help-desk ticket IDs for any changes made before travel

• A short internal note or checklist showing you ran the campaign

If a customer, insurer, or auditor ever asks how you manage travel risk, you’ll have more than “we tell people to be careful.”

VRC: Your Remote Work Partner

VanRein Compliance helps make travel security routine. We can:

• Design a short, repeatable holiday/security campaign

• Align your checklist with your existing policies and frameworks (HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO, etc.)

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

Travel With Confidence, Not Guesswork

You don’t need a massive new program to make holiday travel safer—you just need a few habits your whole team can follow. The payoff is simple: your people can travel, work, and switch off with more confidence, and you can head into Thanksgiving knowing that “work on the go” doesn’t have to mean “security held together with crossed fingers.”

Partner with VanRein Compliance and we can bundle travel security and holiday readiness into your current roadmap.