HIPAA Compliance Solution - HIPAA Security Compliance

The widespread adoption of measures like electronic health records and a national healthcare network for transmitting patient information throughout the healthcare industry can provide countless benefits to healthcare professionals and especially to patients. Yet these technological advances can’t be employed unless Americans are assured that their sensitive health information will be protected.

So in 2003, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) executed formal measures to help protect sensitive health information. HHS adopted the final rule of standards for the security of electronic protected health information—the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)—to be implemented by health plans, healthcare clearinghouses, and certain healthcare providers.

Since 2003, the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) has actively monitored and enforced compliance with HIPAA. For example, out of 29,000 cases reported to HHS since April 2003, about 17 percent resulted in some type of enforcement activity:

411 were sent to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for criminal investigation
212 were sent to CMS for HIPAA security violations

The HHS OIG also requires healthcare organizations to provide documentation on hospital policies and procedures on security-related issues such as:

Risk assessments around electronic protected health information (ePHI)
Configuration management
Physical and logical access to systems and data
Incident reports
Employee sanctions for policy violations
Internet usage
Patch management
Wireless security
Encryption of ePHI
Logging of system activities

Security Compliance Management for HIPAA

With the stringent requirements for HIPAA compliance, your healthcare organization must adopt a security compliance management strategy with the right security information and log management solutions. But whether you’re beginning to explore the importance of collecting and analyzing log data, enhancing your security practices to protect your applications and databases from insider threats, or need real-time actionable security and HIPAA compliance information throughout your enterprise, netForensics can help you meet all your security compliance management challenges.

nFX One: Helping You Maintain HIPAA Compliance While Securing Your Enterprise

netForensics nFX One is a streamlined yet robust security compliance management suite that empowers you to continuously manage risk while leveraging recognized security best practices. Through data collection, log management, real-time monitoring, threat identification, rapid response, and actionable reporting, you can tackle information security and compliance at the same time with nFX One solutions:

nFX SIM One, with patented, high-performance SIM technology, empowers you to transform huge volumes of complex security-related data into understandable, actionable information. This streamlined, easy-to-deploy SIM solution allows you to respond to security events in real time—for active compliance management from the perimeter to the core.
nFX Data One delivers a new level of insight into user activities, so you know who’s touching your critical data and what they are doing with it—at all times across your enterprise. nFX Data One protects your agency from data breaches by monitoring databases and applications and alerting on any hostile and unauthorized activity.
nFX Log One delivers automated, easy-to-use log management for collecting, documenting, and storing log data for HIPAA compliance audits. With broad access to your log data—plus the power to take action on it when necessary—you can effectively meet your compliance demands while enhancing your overall information security posture.

Learn more about achieving and maintaining HIPAA compliance through proactive threat and risk management.

Download: Achieving HIPAA Compliance through Security Information Management

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Compliance