Free HIPAA Awareness & Compliance Survey

If you are in the healthcare business you have HIPAA compliance requirements to adhere to. Maybe you are not aware of what they are or maybe you just want to gauge your organization’s readiness prior to seeking professional help? We have provided a short survey quiz that will give you a score and some suggestions. The HIPAA Awareness & Compliance Survey helps to determine your office’s degree of HIPAA compliance and awareness.

Our free HIPAA survey takes just a minute or two to get your score.

If you’d rather discuss HIPAA, HITECH, NIST 800-66 and Meaningful Use Audits; we are ready when you are. Lazarus Alliance is completely committed to you and your business’ HIPAA Audit, HITECH, NIST 800-66 and Meaningful Use audit success. Regardless of whether you represent the private sector or the public sector, we stand ready to partner with your organizations.

For additional information please contact us using the form to the right or calling 1-888-896-7580.

[WpProQuiz 3]

If your business handles PHI, proof of security and compliance must be made available for review by auditors. Noncompliance can result in harsh legal actions and possible fines. Lazarus Alliance Proactive Cyber Security™ audit and compliance services ensures security and privacy by providing a detailed risk analysis, security assessment and guidance by our team of Cybervisors™ . We’ll help you proactively track and manage compliance artifacts and because we leverage the power of the IT Audit Machine (ITAM)™ our solution is constantly updated with the latest compliance requirements.

Lazarus Alliance creates sustainable HIPAA Audit, HITECH, NIST 800-66 and Meaningful Use audit  partnerships with our clients. We have a proven methodology and project plan that helps our clients achieve compliance on budget and on schedule. You will come to appreciate our Service, Integrity and Reliability which will be apparent to you from the very first call.

A Proactive Approach Could Have Prevented the DNC Email Hack

The NSA isn’t the only Washington organization being embarrassed by a data breach. The sorry state of cyber security in America has taken center stage in this year’s presidential election. In June, it was discovered that Russian cyber criminals had managed to hack the Democratic National Committee’s email server, stealing over 20,000 emails and sharing them with WikiLeaks. While most of the emails contain mundane correspondence, some of them are quite embarrassing and imply possible ethical violations on the part of DNC insiders, such as emails questioning Bernie Sanders’ religion and implying the party officers wished to derail his campaign. Shortly after the emails were released, the DNC’s chairperson, CEO, and communications director abruptly resigned. Even worse, the New York Times has revealed that the DNC email hack might be much more extensive than originally believed, involving the email accounts of over 100 individuals and groups.

The DNC email hack bears a strong resemblance to the equally scandalous email hack perpetrated on Sony Pictures two years ago, which was believed to have been carried out by North Korean nation-state hackers. That hack involved the release of 170,000 emails, many of them containing negative commentary about major Hollywood stars. Sony’s chairperson was removed, the company ended up being sued, and the emails are still live on WikiLeaks, neatly indexed and searchable.

While the Sony hack and the DNC email hack involved ethical and privacy violations, the release of corporate emails can damage an organization even if the employees in question did nothing wrong. Confidential information about new product launches, marketing strategies, and partnership negotiations are routinely discussed via email, and this information could destroy a company if it fell into the hands of a competitor.

Proactive Ways to Prevent Email Hacks

Both the Sony hack and the DNC email hack could have been prevented using proactive email security measures. Following are three things your company can do to prevent your emails from ending up on WikiLeaks – or in the hands of a competitor.

Train Your Employees How to Spot Spear Phishing

It is believed that the Sony hack and the DNC email hack happened after hackers used a spear-phishing campaign to get hold of legitimate login credentials. Spear phishing has become extremely popular among hackers as end users have become more aware of these scams and as spam filters have gotten better at recognizing and intercepting regular phishing emails. Because spear-phishing emails are sent to only a small group of targets and are carefully researched and crafted to appear legitimate, they tend to pass through spam filters. Therefore, the best defense is employee awareness. See our previous blog for more information on how to spot spear phishing emails.

Set Up Your System to Assign Employee Passwords

Regardless of how many times they are told not to do so, employees frequently choose passwords that are weak, and they tend to use the same password to access multiple systems, including their personal and work accounts. Thus, a hacker may be able to use an employee’s Dropbox password to get into their work email. For this reason, random, strong passwords should be assigned to employees, and the system should be set up to require periodic password changes.

Outsource Your Enterprise Email

In most cases, using a private email server for company email, as the DNC did, is a bad idea. The majority of companies do not have the in-house technical expertise to securely set up an email server, continuously monitor it for unusual user behavior, or maintain up-to-date spam filters. Large enterprise email providers such as Google and Yahoo do. While using one of these providers is not a guarantee that you will not be breached – especially in light of the popularity of social engineering – a third-party provider will offer a higher level of email security than you could achieve in-house.

The cyber security experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help secure your organization’s data.

Healthcare is one of the most regulated industries in the U.S. HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, requires healthcare organizations and their third-party service providers, such as labs and billing companies, to have data security measures in place protect patients’ private health information (PHI). HIPAA compliance is complex, and the penalties for non-compliance are stiff; if a facility’s PHI is breached, and it is found they were not compliant with HIPAA, the facility could face millions of dollars worth of fines. In some cases, company executives can even be held criminally liable.

C-level executives in the healthcare industry may not understand the intricacies of ransomware attacks or phishing schemes, but they do understand the seriousness of HIPAA compliance. They also fall into the trap of thinking that if their organization is compliant with HIPAA, that means their systems are safe. As a result, they devote most or all of their cyber security resources to complying with HIPAA.

HIPAA compliance is crucial – but a cyber security plan cannot start and end with HIPAA compliance.

HIPAA Compliance Is Only a Starting Point to Protect Patient Data

Today’s healthcare IT environment is highly complex. In addition to electronic health records (EHRs), mobile technology, cloud applications, electronic health exchanges, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices are growing in popularity. These technologies are making it easier for healthcare providers to deliver quality care and are improving patients’ lives, but each new gadget and application means new vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit.

In a recent survey of information security experts conducted by the Brookings Institution, most respondents indicated that they felt HIPAA does not sufficiently address modern healthcare data security issues, mainly because the law is light on specifics. HIPAA compliance is primarily about demonstrating that an organization has met certain documentation and procedural requirements. It does not outline precise technical safeguards.

The proof that HIPAA compliance is insufficient to protect against ransomware and data breaches is in the statistics. Healthcare is the most likely industry to experience a data breach. Nearly 90% of healthcare organizations – and 60% of third-party healthcare vendors – have experienced at least one breach. Nearly 80% have had two or more, and nearly 50% have had three or more.

Why Isn’t HIPAA Compliance Enough?

There are several reasons why HIPAA compliance does not provide full data protection on its own. First, it isn’t meant to. Technology simply changes too quickly for any legislation to keep up. By the time a new set of rules were written, they’d already be out of date! This is why HIPAA focuses on what organizations need to achieve, not on precisely how they should go about achieving it. Second, every organization’s IT environment is different. A data security plan that works well at one facility may fall flat at another. Finally, compliance rules cannot adequately address the threats posed by mistakes, negligence, or malicious acts on the part of a facility’s employees, which cause nearly half of all data breaches.

HIPAA compliance should be the starting point – not the entirety – of a comprehensive, proactive healthcare data security plan.

Many healthcare organizations do not have the resources to handle all of their information security needs in-house; many others don’t know where to start. This is why they should partner with a professional cyber security firm such as Lazarus Alliance. The cyber security experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization.