Anyone who is a health care professional or facility or dealing with a health care professional or facility should aware of legal provisions defined by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability )
Health Insurance
Portability and Accounting Act (HIPAA) require an esteem approach to secure
your Patient Health Record also called ‘Patient Protected Health Information’
(PHI). It limits the risk associated with the information of the patients and
also financial risks in case of data theft. Penalties for not complying with
HIPAA may exceed financial risk for the organization. According to the Health Insurance Portability Act (HIPAA) of
1996 and further amendments.
The high number of i.e. more than 94% of Healthcare
organizations admitted to at least one breach of their Patient’ Protected
Health Information PHI breached in past years. Health Care organizations are at
significant risks of their data security. It causes main concern among data administrators
in the Health Care Industry.
Because of Data Breaches, Health Care organizations faced
several and devastating financial consequences in the shape of penalties slapped to them. One of the National Insurer was
hit with a $ 1.7 million for fine for not securing the access to the online database.The fine ranges from $ 100 to
$ 50,000 per record
One major reason for non-compliance or poor compliance to Health
Insurance Portability and Accounting Act (HIPAA) is the lack of resources and less technical skills to keep the IT
infrastructure updated.
10 leading causes of
failing to HIPAA compliance are highlighted below:
1. Windows Update Patch Management:
Your System
requires a constant upgrade as technology
changes and without those update, your
operating system and application are getting vulnerable to external threats and
not doing proper patch management you are placing the whole network of your organization to risks which can affect your
Patients Health information at risk.
2. Implement Security Information and Event
Management SIEM
Security Information
and Event Management is an automated
process it involves you to be notified in case
of data transfer or if it gets breached. You should be the first one to know of that
particular event.
3. Weak passwords.
The best approach to avoid such events is
if you beef up your security with following protocol Uppercase letters, numbers and Symbols. It enables you to adapt a better approach to the security of your
network.
.
4. Having a proper Audit trail and forensics to
identify and respond to Breach. Similar to SIEM organizations must have a proper Forensic and
Audit trail to identify data breach in case they are unable to analyze at the first moment.
5. Some applications are not Health Insurance
Portability and Accounting Act HIPAA compliant, which can cause a major breach. Cross very
with your IT Staff if the application you are installing is HIPAA Compliant
some applications are not compliant and it causes an information Breach.
6. The absence of security validation for new Workstations.
Your security compliance will be boosted once you validate that your systems
are configured securely. Make sure your electronic health record system is
fully updated and tested on all of the vulnerabilities
and penetration testing.
7. Outdated anti-malware and anti-virus
technology.
For the best outcome use centralize antivirus instead of configuring them on an individual workstation. It enables you to centralize
the updates and policy implementation.
8. Encryption of sensitive information in transit.
Make sure your website or any piece of information which is communicating with the
outside of your network, must be AES-256
bit encrypted. When you send an email or share files, make sure they are fully
encrypted.
9. Lack of trained staff.
Small and medium-sized organizations face
a budget issue when they want to employee
full time IT Staff. There are ways to minimize your budget by acquiring outside help such as White Wings Consulting
HIPAA services. They not only check if you are HIPAA compliant but also troubleshoot
the issues which you face.
10. Implementation of the HIPAA monitoring System. Network Infrastructure is similar to cabling in the switch
rack. Once you have implemented it you can see every
thing is working fine but it gets tangled when you make any change. Same
is the case with HIPAA once you achieve the compliance your assumption is its
working perfect and you are compliant with Health Insurance Portability and
Accounting Act HIPAA but the changes might lose you compliance.
Security
is a journey, not a destination you need to keep checking if it is compliant
after every change which you make on the network. To keep you updated you need to have a
Monitoring System which scan and provide
you reports on a monthly or quarterly
basis.
.
Anyone who is a health care professional or facility or dealing with a health care professional or facility should aware of legal provisions defined by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability )
Outline of all HIPAA infringement cases that have brought about settlements with the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights (OCR), including cases that have been sought after)
In order to enter into a Money Remittance Business, one needs to understand the basics of, What actually money remittance is.
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