The HIPAA Security Risk Assessment - Technical Safeguards
HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is a federal law in the United States that was enacted in 1996. Its purpose is to protect the privacy and security of patient's healthcare information. HIPAA applies to healthcare providers, health plans, and healthcare clearinghouses. It also applies to business associates who work with these entities and have access to patient's health information. HIPAA sets national standards for the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of patient's healthcare information.
One of the key aspects of HIPAA is the technical safeguards that must be in place to protect patients' healthcare information. Technical safeguards are the mechanisms that ensure that patients' digital healthcare information is secure and confidential. These safeguards are in place to protect against unauthorized access, use, or disclosure of patients' healthcare information, and must be regularly reviewed and evaluated as part of an organization’s HIPAA Security Risk Assessment.
The technical safeguards that must be in place under HIPAA are divided into four categories: access controls, audit controls, integrity controls, and transmission security.
Access Controls:
Access controls are measures that limit who has access to patient's healthcare information. These controls ensure that only authorized individuals can access patients' healthcare information. Access controls can include biometric identification, using unique user IDs and passwords, implementing two-factor authentication, and limiting access to PHI based on job function.
Audit Controls:
Audit controls are measures that track and record who has accessed patients' healthcare information. Audit controls can include logs of access attempts, access reports, and access monitoring software. This information can be used to detect and investigate potential security incidents.
Integrity Controls:
Integrity controls are measures that ensure that patients' digital healthcare information is accurate and complete, and has not been altered or tampered with in transit.
It also includes implementing error-checking mechanisms to detect and prevent data corruption. Integrity controls can include data backups, data validation, and data encryption.
Transmission Security:
Transmission security is the final category of technical safeguards under HIPAA. Transmission security measures ensure that patients' healthcare information is secure during transmission. This includes measures such as encryption of data during transmission, use of secure communication channels, and measures to prevent unauthorized access to transmitted data. HIPAA requires that covered entities use encryption and decryption to protect PHI when it is transmitted over public networks or stored on portable devices. Encryption converts plain text into code that can only be read by authorized users with the appropriate decryption key. Decryption is the process of converting the code back into plain text.
In summary, HIPAA technical safeguards are a set of measures designed to protect patients' healthcare information. These safeguards include access controls, audit controls, integrity controls, and transmission security. Healthcare providers, health plans, and healthcare clearinghouses must implement these safeguards to protect patients' healthcare information and comply with HIPAA regulations. By doing so, they keep patients' digital healthcare information confidential, secure, and protected from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure.
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How Medcurity Helps:
The Medcurity platform was built to bring clarity and confidence to HIPAA compliance for healthcare providers and their business associates. Our guided Security Risk Assessment walks healthcare professionals through an easy-to-use step-by-step assessment with additional guidance and definitions built in. In addition to assessing your technical safeguards, every covered entity must evaluate its physical and administrative protections. All three pieces are brought together in the comprehensive Medcurity Security Risk Assessment.
The risks in the digital world are always changing, which is why Medcurity takes proactive steps to ensure that our Security Risk Assessment always meets current government requirements and recommends the latest best practices to protect electronic PHI. The SRA is intuitive and time-saving. Once completed, the platform automatically generates a full prioritized task list showing where your greatest vulnerabilities lie and how to best address them in order to become compliant.
Assessing your technical safeguards is a critical piece of your compliance, not only to meet government requirements but also to protect your patients from one of the greatest threats to their data. Hackers are pouring more of their time and effort into compromising healthcare information, as healthcare providers place great value on the data they collect and are often less aware of their vulnerabilities.
It’s very difficult to fill the gaps in your system if you don’t know where those gaps are, so before you lose sleep over the increasing risks to your protected information, conduct a full analysis to find out where those risks actually lie. Your patients are relying on you to keep their information protected.
Unfortunately, it’s not a matter of if you’ll be targeted by a cybercriminal, but when. This is why it’s absolutely critical to be proactively protecting your digital data, instead of having to pick up the pieces and pay the price when that data gets stolen, lost, or ransomed. You can start your HIPAA compliance journey and your Security Risk Assessment today!
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If you have further questions regarding the administrative, physical, and/or technical safeguards required by HIPAA, please reach out to your team at Medcurity. We’re here to help you simplify the HIPAA Security Risk Assessment so that you can focus on providing the best patient care.