The healthcare sector in the United States has seen a continuous increase in both the frequency and cost of data breaches in the past decade. This is shown by a 61% rise in HIPAA violations from 2019 to 2020, resulting in penalties totaling $13 million for the sector. From 2020 to 2023, the average cost of a single healthcare data breach in the US rose nearly 30%, reaching a whopping $9.3 million. According to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the industry is struggling to adhere to HIPAA compliance requirements, leading to a growing number of violations.
If you are a security manager working towards HIPAA compliance for your organization, this blog is for you. Discover the essential HIPAA standards necessary to protect electronic protected health information (ePHI) and evaluate your compliance status with our comprehensive checklist.
HIPAA requirements
Part 164, Subpart C, of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), 1996 details the security standards for the protection of ePHI. These standards are applicable to all covered entities and business associates as defined by HIPAA. The administrative safeguards to be practiced by healthcare organizations include:
1. Establishing a security management process
Do you remember the CIA triad? The model is the foundation for information security. It requires your team of security analysts to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information. Based on the CIA triad, this HIPAA standard requires you to implement policies to monitor, detect, prevent, and mitigate information security breaches by effective risk management.
HIPAA puts forth the following checklist while establishing your security management process.
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Risk assessment: Assessing potential risks and vulnerabilities in the network.
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Risk management: Reducing the potential risk exposure of the network.
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Sanction policy: Assessing the risk level of the workforce handling ePHI.
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Information system activity review: Reviewing security information, including audit logs, access reports, and incident reports.
2. Ensuring workforce integrity
The most dangerous threats while managing ePHI are those that come from insiders. In order to ensure the integrity of information against insider threats, this HIPAA standard requires that you implement specific controls over user access, permissions, and privileges of the workforce members who manage ePHI in your organization.
HIPAA directs you to ensure the following while implementing relevant workforce monitoring policies.
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Authorization and supervision: Implementing an authentication mechanism to authorize workforce members. This is part of the privileged account management strategy of the company.
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Workforce clearance: Determining the risk levels of the workforce members before assigning access privileges to ePHI data.
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Termination procedure: Establishing measures to deny access or terminate processes that are carried out by unauthorized members of the workforce.
3. Access management
As the name suggests, HIPAA requires you to set up policies and procedures to authorize and authenticate access to all network resources that deal with ePHI. HIPAA requires you to check the following list during access management.
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Access authorization: Implementing procedures to authorize access to ePHI via a workstation, application, or process. This is a part of the privileged identity management mechanism of the company.
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Access establishment and modification: Establishing a set of procedures to review and modify access privileges based on security and operational requirements.
4. Managing security incidents
Any event that indicates an impending threat is considered a security incident. HIPAA requires you to monitor, record, and analyze such security incidents in the beginning stages to detect and prevent potential breaches. For this, you have to adhere to the below standard.
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Response and reporting: Implementing a definite process to record all security incidents and automate responses while identifying potential threats.
A HIPAA checklist for healthcare organizations
Are you ready to assess your organization’s HIPAA compliance readiness? Use this checklist to find out.
◻ You have a security solution that enables you to monitor all network activity, including both on-premises and cloud environments.
◻ Health information technicians are able to manage security information and audit logs efficiently.
◻ IT analysts receive instant alerts on potential data breaches.
◻ Analysts can track employee activities and assign risk scores accordingly.
◻ Two-factor authentication (2FA) or multi-factor authentication (MFA) is in place to authenticate your health information technicians and analysts accessing ePHI.
◻ You can easily manage user permissions and privileges regarding ePHI.
◻ You have a predefined incident response plan in place.
◻ The incident response plan is automated.
◻ Your security team regularly reviews and updates your security protocols to adapt to evolving threats.
◻ Your SOC receives periodic training on security best practices and compliance requirements.
Log360: Going beyond HIPAA compliance
As the threat landscape evolves, defending against cyberattacks while maintaining HIPAA compliance is more challenging than ever. Simplify your strategy with ManageEngine Log360, a unified SIEM solution with:
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Out-of-the-box reports for HIPAA compliance.
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Real-time alerts to detect data security breaches.
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Real-time security analytics to estimate the risk exposure on your network.
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Advanced threat detection with threat intelligence.
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Automated workflows for effective and efficient incident response.
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User risk monitoring to assign risk scores based on anomalous user and entity behavior.
To explore more, sign up for a personalized demo now.
