Why Compliance is Insufficient for Healthcare Cybersecurity

The last decade has seen numerous mergers and acquisitions, an expanding continuum of care and the advent of accountable care organizations. This changing landscape is making data sharing increasingly complex. Furthermore, the continuing BYOD trend and cloud migration are among the myriad of industry evolutions that are creating challenges for compliance. To further complicate matters, providers are realizing that in today’s digitized healthcare environment, cybersecurity cannot be achieved through compliance alone. The reason is simple: HIPAA compliance focuses primarily on demonstrably meeting certain documentation and procedural requirements. It falls short of outlining precise technical safeguards.

Where to Focus. What to Do.

While news headlines are focused on unwanted intrusions by outsiders, it is important to remember that approximately half of all healthcare data breaches in 2016 were attributed to insiders, whether due to malicious intent or by accident. Who are the insiders? They are clinical and operational employees, contractors, vendors and partners – all of whom require access to sensitive data as part of their regular workflow. By placing identity at the center of a healthcare organization’s cybersecurity program, providers gain complete visibility and control over who has access to critical applications and data, including the electronic health record (EHR) system. When done properly, governing access strikes a perfect balance between the need for strong security and the need for streamlined clinical and operational workflow. Ultimately, this enables providers to focus on what they do best – delivering patient care. Cybersecurity cannot be achieved through compliance alone.

SailPoint Can Help

With SailPoint, providers can deploy a robust identity program that not only addresses regulatory compliance concerns, but also delivers greater information security while improving clinical and operational workflows:

Discover and Classify Sensitive Information

Detect and locate stale and sensitive unstructured, HIPAA-protected files residing outside a database throughout your entire provider organization and across your cloud and on-premises file shares.

Gain Visibility Into Who Has Access to What

Gather and reconcile identity and access information across all applications and resources, whether on-premises or in the cloud. Establish centralized visibility into user access rights, and create a governance foundation for establishing controls over that access.

Monitor User Activity in Real Time

Identify rogue users trying to access sensitive health records or performing changes to permissions and groups.

Maintain Control Over Access to Sensitive Applications and Data

Leverage a highly-extensible framework for defining and implementing both detective and preventive controls in the form of policies that govern user access requests, separation of duty (SoD) enforcement, and access reviews.

Streamline Access Request and Delivery

Enable automated access to users based on their role within the organization, and provide self-service features, which empower users to request additional access within a governance framework.

Manage Complex User Relationships

Deploy a comprehensive identity model to fully manage users and the multiple identities (or personas) common to healthcare providers (ex. a practicing physician that also serves as a department head). Create and maintain rich information about each persona to provide granular, nuanced control.

Maintain and Demonstrate Compliance

Reduce compliance costs while meeting the highest standards of corporate governance mandated by regulations. Allow organizations to build a single framework for preventing and detecting access problems that support all identity processes.

Defining the Key Benefits

Because SailPoint solutions are highly scalable and can be deployed via on-premises, cloud or a hybrid of the two, providers have flexibility in how they address their unique organizational qualities and needs. Through identity governance, providers can achieve the following key benefits:

Confidently Meet Healthcare Regulatory Compliance Audit Requirements

Create, manage and document information access policies and user access rights.

Securely Manage Access to Sensitive Data Files

Provide the necessary governance of user access to hundreds of systems and applications housing HIPAA-protected patient records, as well as the organization’s financial data and intellectual property.

Effectively Optimize Clinical and Operational Workflow

Automate formerly manual processes for requesting, granting and provisioning access to needed resources.

Efficiently Locate and Manage Sensitive Unstructured Data Files

Find, classify and control access to data files residing outside a database.

Why Providers Trust SailPoint

Deep Understanding of Provider Needs

Notable healthcare providers (whether large health systems, teaching hospitals or pediatric facilities, etc.), currently leverage SailPoint identity solutions to effectively govern access, which is a key component of their information security program.

Recognized Authority

Gartner has recognized SailPoint as a leading authority in IGA for last the six years while Forrester has presented similar accolades.

Consistently High User Satisfaction

With a consistent customer satisfaction and retention rating of 95%+, SailPoint is committed to providing a mutually-rewarding experience that extends throughout the relationship lifecycle.

Extensive Partner Network

SailPoint builds strategic partnerships with companies around the world to ensure we have trained sales and delivery partners to best serve our customers.

Technology Alliance

SailPoint has broad technology alliances to deliver robust, relevant capabilities that drive strong user experience.

Proven ROI

SailPoint helps providers achieve measurable business results. Take our free business value assessment to learn the cost savings you may achieve by implementing an identity solution.

Learn more about Identity and Healthcare.

1. CYBERSECURITY 2017: HEALTHCARE PROVIDER SECURITY ASSESSMENT, A KLAS-CHIME Benchmarking Report https://chimecentral.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CHIME-Industry-Version-Cybersecurity.pdf