Based on Healthcare IT News’ February article “HIPAA data breaches climb 138 percent“, it is becoming clear that compliance fines may be the least of the concern for health related businesses. A lot of clients that we talk with are primarily concerned with making sure that they are meeting the requirements that HIPAA has brought. That is not to say they do not care about the personal data of their clients, they most certainly do. However with today’s every changing landscape in technology, it is near impossible to keep up.
The healthcare industry always been a different beast in that they are in a constant battle in merging modern technology with older medical device technology. Let’s face it, healthcare specific IT has generally ran a bit behind than other industries. Primarily due to the required stability. However the business side has continued to evolve at a break neck speed. What happens it that the “gap” between these two areas create vulnerabilities. Healthcare IT professionals are hard pressed to keep up just with the changes let alone assuring compliance with ever change.
Unfortunately not many tools can constantly monitor, not only HIPAA compliance, but vulnerabilities, file changes, and other potential threats that can lead to these ever-increasing data breaches. This is actually one of the reasons that we partnered with SignaCert. Their tool-set is a unique blend of compliance and vulnerability tools that allow us and our clients to avoid costly fines and lower the potential of future data breaches.