For organizations, the scope of the HIPAA Security Standard poses an operational dilemma. Compliance with the standard requires the use of many security technologies and best practices to demonstrate strong efforts towards complying with this federal regulation. To complicate matters, HIPAA requirements were written to address medical record processing security practices from small doctor’s offices to large hospital and insurance networks. This resulted in vague requirements with no firm directives underneath, and a wide scope of interpretation as to what HIPAA actually requires in terms of security.

The solution to this problem is for organizations to design and develop unique, best practice-focused compliance programs based on their infrastructure, organization and operational risk. This requires setting and implementing a number of standards within the organization, including technical and paper-based policies, procedures, standards and technical controls. The resulting security program must incorporate a strong layer of audit to demonstrate appropriate governance over the confidentiality, availability and integrity of ePHI and the program’s relevance to the requirements set forth in the HIPAA Security Standard.
 
The ability to effectively audit IT and security operations is a complex issue. Effective audit of security operations requires both a real-time and historical operational understanding of billions of data points that relate to thousands of systems. A real-time perspective is required to gain the ability to appropriately respond to immediate threats that seek to compromise sensitive systems. A historical perspective is required to ensure that the organization is effectively performing login monitoring, access control, configuration and other security-relevant changes to their sensitive systems in accordance with standards over time.

Activeworx solves this complex problem by providing an automated solution to turn floods of network and security data into accurate, compliance-relevant information as well as saving information as auditable, check-summed files. From a real-time perspective, Activeworx automatically collects and correlates potential threats to system vulnerabilities, business risk and associated security data. Once a threat is validated, Activeworx initiates an audited alerting process to appropriate personnel. From a historical perspective, Activeworx has the capability to collect all network data for write to disc. This data can be searched, retrieved, and correlated making required data retention times easy and automated. Through the historical capabilities in Activeworx, organizations can effectively manage and report on adherence to their system configuration standards, information system review processes and access control standards.

Activeworx HIPAA Benefits

• ROI - Typical return on investments (ROI) of 1-3 months based on reduced or eliminated consulting, personnel and infrastructure costs.
• Correlate – Correlate data from devices including firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, vulnerability assessment tools, operating system logs, application logs, identity management solutions, virtual private networks and more
• Network Data - Easily deliver one-click network security reporting that provides relevant data in an intuitive format
• Monitor and Mitigate - Demonstrate the ability to monitor and mitigate risk
• Monitor and Report - Separately monitor and report on events that involve regulated systems
• Automate - Easily increase protection while eliminating manual processes
• Efficiency - Save valuable security analyst resources from tedious, manual tasks
• Oversight - Enables active oversight, including automated reporting for HIPAA audit and compliance
• Log Management - Log all network events for long-term, auditable proof of compliance