Harnessing Innovation and Security Through HITRUST Certification in Healthcare Organizations
Mike Preston, Director, Client Partner
Mar 17, 2023
Healthcare organizations strive to provide safe, secure environments for their patients and staff. It is also of paramount importance that healthcare data remains private and protected from unauthorized access and data breaches. To achieve these goals in an increasingly digital world, there has been a turn to security certifications such as HITRUST certification.
HITRUST certification is a critical security standard for healthcare organizations. It provides comprehensive safeguards to protect confidential data and helps ensure compliance with HIPAA, HITECH, GDPR, and other regulations.
In this blog post, we’ll look at what HITRUST certification is and how it can benefit healthcare organizations. By the end of this post, you should have a better understanding of whether HITRUST certification is right for your organization.
What is HITRUST CSF and its Purpose?
The Health Information Trust Alliance, or HITRUST, is a non-profit organization established in 2007. The Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) exists to ensure that information security becomes a core pillar of, rather than an obstacle to, the broad adoption of health information systems and exchanges. HITRUST collaborated with healthcare, business, technology, and information security leaders to establish the first ever framework, HITRUST CSF (commonly referred to as the “Common Security Framework”) an internationally recognized, certifiable framework that provides healthcare organizations with a comprehensive approach to protecting sensitive data.
Pioneered by leading healthcare and IT organizations in collaboration with legal, privacy, and information security experts, this framework has a modular design that simplifies compliance with global security mandates such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), International Standardisation Organisation (ISO), and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The HITRUST CSF addresses the challenges facing the industry and fills gaps that several HIPAA regulations do not solve by leveraging and enhancing existing standards and regulations to provide organizations of any size with prescriptive implementation requirements.
By bringing structure and best practices to the entire organization, the HITRUST CSF empowers healthcare organizations to reduce risk, demonstrate compliance right through their supply chain and optimize operations. As trusted assurance in the exchange of sensitive healthcare information continues to rise, the HITRUST CSF stands poised as the gold standard for organizations looking to proactively protect themselves while having visibility across their ecosystem.
How HITRUST Can Help Healthcare Organizations Achieve Greater Efficiency and Security
By gaining HITRUST certification, healthcare organizations can demonstrate their years of commitment to standards of excellence and trustworthiness. Some of the top benefits of attaining HITRUST certification include:
- Improved patient care: HITRUST certification is an important tool for healthcare providers looking to protect the sensitive data of their patients. HITRUST certification assures patients that their most sensitive information such as medical records and financial information is securely managed and protected with the utmost sector-specific standards of encryption and physical protection.
- Reduced operational costs: Healthcare organizations benefit by having cohesive set of information security policies and controls in place because it helps reduce operational costs related to maintaining complex compliance requirements.
- Increased security: HITRUST certification requires healthcare organizations to evaluate and address their existing security systems, processes, and policies. This allows for a more comprehensive approach to securing sensitive data and reduces the risk of cyberattacks and data breaches.
- Enhanced compliance: HITRUST certification is widely recognized as the gold standard for data security in the healthcare industry. It helps organizations meet or exceed regulatory requirements, including HIPAA regulations.
- Enhanced partner collaboration: HITRUST certification can help healthcare organizations collaborate more effectively with partners by providing a shared set of security standards. This ensures the accuracy and integrity of data exchanged between parties, while making it easier to track and audit information flows. It also reduces the risk of unauthorized access or misuse of confidential data shared between partners. HCTI’s Neutral ZoneTM, the third party data collaboration platform facilitates seamless data sharing while maintaining full control of IP.
- Increased reputation: HITRUST certification gives healthcare organizations a competitive edge and boosts their reputation in the industry, making them more attractive to potential customers and partners.
- Improved staff training: HITRUST certification requires organizations to provide staff with comprehensive security and privacy training. This helps ensure that personnel are aware of the latest threats and how to protect against them, reducing the likelihood of a data breach or attack.
Partner with HITRUST Vendors to Protect Your Patients’ Information
Working with a HITRUST certified vendor can assure partners and patients that their data is maintained with the highest level of security and integrity.
Healthcare Triangle takes data security extremely seriously, because of our commitment to building a stronger security posture – our Cloud and Data Platform (CaDP) has earned certified status for information security by HITRUST. HITRUST Risk-based, multi-year certified status demonstrates that HCTI’s Cloud and Data Platform (CaDP), marketed as CloudEzTM and DataEzTM, has met key regulations and industry-defined requirements and is appropriately managing risk. This achievement places us in an elite group of organizations worldwide that have earned this certification.
HITRUST certification now enables our life sciences and healthcare clients to leverage CloudEz to host PHI sensitive applications. In addition, DataEz platform offers a highly modular, scalable, and API-driven platform to enable AI engineering, data analytics, data security, and compliance that allows organizations to derive meaningful insights out of complex datasets such as real-world data or genomic data.
Our HITRUST Risk-based, 2-year certification is evidence that we are at the forefront of industry best practices for information risk management and compliance.