Healthcare organizations are tasked with the heavy responsibility of saving lives and maintaining the good health of a community. Adding more weight to the shoulders of healthcare organizations are data audits for HIPAA compliance. With all of this going on, the last thing an organization needs is to halt care due to an internal data security oversight.
HIPAA requires all organizations with access to sensitive patient health information have a data security process that protects patient confidentiality from unauthorized access, use, disclosure or interference. This “data security process” is intentionally vague as different organizations will have their own unique requirements. However, all organizations must have a method of collecting and analyzing a system user’s activity logs.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology published a guide to help organizations better understand the HIPAA log audit requirements of their security system. According to the guide, HIPAA requires that security systems have audit controls in place that:
Establish identity trigger indicators – signs of compromised data.
Establish a schedule for routine audits and guidelines for random audits.
The auditing abilities of your security system must maintain an audit log on who, what, when, where and how patient health information is accessed. To help organizations easily maintain accurate audit logs for HIPAA compliance, ActivTrak developed a Healthcare Bundle: https://activtrak.com/healthcare-bundle/ This cloud-based tool captures user activity in real-time with detailed controls and alerts to demonstrate compliance and keep patient health information private and secure.
Real-Time User Activity Monitoring to Prevent Patient Health Information Exfiltration
The effects of a patient health information leak can be disastrous to an organization. Not only will the organization need to find and stop the leak, they’ll also need to make sure all other data is safe from any future leaks. With ActivTrak, data security administrators get instant notifications concerning security issues in real-time to stop attacks from spreading throughout the environment, such as copying protected data to USB drives or accidentally sharing a file. Additionally, ActivTrak’s screenshot redaction keeps personally identifiable information (PII) private and secure patient information from being captured and viewed unnecessarily.
All user activities and notifications are detailed in immutable logs that support HIPAA’s requirements in record-keeping. ActivTrak is built with data integrity controls that ensure logs are never altered or destroyed without proper authorization.
Quick and Efficient HIPAA Compliance Audits with ActivTrak
Passing a scheduled HIPAA compliance audit should be treated as a minimum-security requirement. What health organizations should truly strive for is a security system that allows them to quickly and efficiently conduct a HIPAA compliance audit whenever they want. Depending on the size of the organization, this can be a tremendous and labor-intensive task.
ActivTrak generates and maintains user activity and alarm logs so auditors can easily see where your organization’s team is spending their time and how they’re treating sensitive patient data. The software also comes with a variety of reports for administrative oversight whenever they need it.
Conduct Forensic Security Investigations with ActivTrak
Understanding how your team is using patient health information is essential to maintaining HIPAA compliance and enforcing data security policies. Your administrators need a comprehensive view of what user activities are routine and how to discover anomalies that could lead to unintentional risk.
With ActivTrak, administrators can enforce security rules for websites and applications, be alerted to accesses to risky websites and block or terminate applications as a result of security policy violations. Administrators can also analyze user risk scores and review video evidence to see which user behavior violates compliance policies and take steps to avoid future occurrences.
Keeping your organization HIPAA compliant and audit ready is no easy task as it requires your team to be vigilant in their record keeping and be proactive against potential threats. With a user activity monitoring software, you can be confident that your employees are doing everything they’re supposed to be doing to keep your patient health information safe and secure. ActivTrak’s user activity monitoring software helps healthcare organizations secure data, understand what employees are doing and demonstrate compliance. Visit https://activtrak.com to learn more about ActivTrak’s software and help keep your data secure and HIPAA compliant.
