HITRUST, or Health Information Trust Alliance, was founded in 2007, aiming to boost tools & solutions. These tools and solutions are the ones that protect sensitive information & manage information risk for organizations across the globe. HITRUST is not limited to any particular industry but also throughout the third-party supply chain. HITRUST collaborates with thought leaders from privacy, information security, risk, and threat management across the public and private sectors. This provides a well-informed framework suitable to all organizations across diverse industries and sectors. Thus, HITRUST is a widely adopted risk and compliance management framework for assessment and assurance. It understands the challenges of maintaining several programs to manage compliance and information security.
Some features of HITRUST®
These are a few features of the HITRUST compliance framework but are not limited to these.- Benchmarking and providing advanced analytics
HITRUST compliance framework benchmarks against the baseline and provides advanced analytics for the cloud infrastructure. - Custom assessment and reporting
HITRUST CSF does a comprehensive assessment of the cloud infrastructure and reports the findings for action against failures. - Centralized corrective action plans
Comprehensive documentation is available for a corrective action plan to mitigate risks. - Tracking assessments
The assessments are further tracked for any changes or remediations that may have been done.
HITRUST® + Cloud
While the cloud offers many advantages, complexities and risks also grow with it. Roles and responsibilities must be clarified when leveraging cloud service providers to avoid misunderstandings. Security controls are shared or inherited between the CSP and the organization. Ownership, responsibility, and operation of security controls while automating need to be clarified. It is in the organization’s best interest to protect its sensitive information. Understanding your responsibilities and assessing security effectiveness when control responsibility is shared is vital. If not well understood, the risks associated with cloud hosting, PAAS, or even a business process provider can prove catastrophic. HITRUST program provides the capability to remove the confusion and guesswork between the customer and the service provider. It helps better understand the roles and responsibilities related to shared and inherited controls. It outlines data governance, information risk management, and regulatory compliance requirements in clear and concise language that is easy to understand. The HITRUST approach ensures that all programs looking after information security and compliance are aligned.
Benefits of HITRUST Certification
Compliance has become complicated and complex to navigate as healthcare organizations require more evolving technologies to protect and transmit their data. The industry desperately needs a system that is efficient, secure, and transparent to protect from cyberattacks and breaches. The basic guardrails are provided by HIPAA, which shows the requirements for confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data that is maintained, received or transmitted. These are reasonable guardrails but are too elastic and filled with loopholes and vagaries. A robust framework is required that digs deeper and ensures protection against threats and an actionable roadmap to achieve them. This does not mean HIPAA should be ignored, but seen as a predecessor to HITRUST. This is where HITRUST comes in. The HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) is developed by healthcare and IT professionals. It helps organizations to manage the security requirements inherent in HIPAA efficiently. HITRUST offers providers integration for the applicable requirements that can benefit not only offer protection to their customers but also themselves.
Core benefits and value of HITRUST
- Incorporates existing, globally recognized standards such as HIPAA, NIST, ISO, PCI, FTC Red Flag, and COBIT (Know more)
- Reduces risk of non-compliance with HIPAA
- Scales according to your organization’s size, type, and complexity
- Provides clear, actionable guidelines
- Evolves according to your needs, as well as changes in both the healthcare industry and the regulatory environment
- Protects PHI, PII, and digital assets from cyber-criminals
- Proves attestation to regulations pertaining to sensitive information and digital assets
- Generates one report that demonstrates to all customers that their data is secure
- Reduces the cost and time spent by IT on compliance audits requested by customers
- Provides a framework to measure the security and compliance postures of partners
- Raises the level of awareness of security and compliance importance across the company
HITRUST Requirements
The HITRUST CSF ( Common Security Framework) contains 14 control categories. These categories comprise 49 control objectives and 156 security and privacy-related control specifications. Where the control objectives are the according to your desired results, and control specifications are the tasks your infosec teams need to perform to achieve your objectives.The basic steps for approaching the requirements are
- Download the latest version of HITRUST CSF.
- Outline and determine your scope.
- Purchase the MyCSF tool.
- Perform a self-assessment of your organization's size and risk exposure.
- Get an external audit by a third-party auditor licensed by HITRUST Alliance.
- Get validated by submitting the auditor's report.
- Receive certification from HITRUST if the score is acceptable.
Is your organization ready for HITRUST Certification?
HITRUST certification requires independent assessment and serious thought for any organization. It means you must invest time, money, and a lot of heavy lifting for your resources. The timeline for attaining the certification can be three to four months, depending on the size and complexity of your organization. Most organizations work with a partner as the process can be overwhelming. HITRUST Certification is valid for two years, post which you have to undergo the assessment again. But, benefits like data security, reduced risk, and compliance across several regulations and frameworks make it worth the cost. For any organization, it is always better to follow the best practices and align with the best compliance frameworks. HITRUST certification can be advertised with pride because your organization has met the gold standard for compliance. This translates to your customer's and business partners' peace of mind and yours too.Why Cloudanix
HITRUST provides a comprehensive overview of security controls. Due to this, many organizations have adopted HITRUST despite not being mandatory. Cloudanix takes this security to the next level with multiple frameworks mapped, helping attain a truly secure environment. With Cloudanix, you get more than continuous monitoring of the cloud infrastructure, threat detection, and clear visibility of all assets while alerting for any changes that may leave you vulnerable. Cloudanix brings ease of adoption and automation to the security world, ensuring lesser fatigue and person count to manage security.FAQ
Your questions answered.
What is HITRUST compliance?
HITRUST compliance, as the name suggests, was created for the healthcare sector to address its information security with an aim to reduce and eliminate third-party assurances and assessments.
Does HITRUST mean HIPAA compliance?
Both HITRUST and HIPAA are different compliance families. HIPAA compliance requirements depend on the organization’s size and the skill set available, which means there is a certain amount of openness to interpretation. HITRUST focuses on solving these issues and providing a more secure compliance framework.
What is HITRUST CSF?
HITRUST has incorporated other standards, such as CCPA, GDPR, PDHI, etc., into its fold to provide a robust security environment. This comprehensive framework is ever-evolving and is called HITRUST CSF.
Who needs HITRUST? Is it only for the healthcare industry?
HITRUST was created for the healthcare industry, but it is also helpful for other industries. It can help secure the IT security posture of multiple industries.
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