{"id":4156,"date":"2024-08-06T15:41:02","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T19:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/csicomp.wpengine.com\/?p=4156"},"modified":"2025-06-24T14:42:31","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T18:42:31","slug":"automating-risk-management-and-cybersecurity-compliance-in-healthcare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csicompanies.com\/automating-risk-management-and-cybersecurity-compliance-in-healthcare\/","title":{"rendered":"Automating Risk Management and Cybersecurity Compliance in Healthcare"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Automating\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

For the last couple of newsletters, I have been writing from a fairly general level as introductions to this topic. In this newsletter, we attempt to get down to some technical details and examples of why automating your risk management and compliance is so important. We\u2019ll even note how we are seeing AI being used within automated risk and cybersecurity compliance tools and what it\u2019s doing on your behalf.<\/p>

Now, the real question around life, the universe, and everything is: have I covered all of my bases with our cybersecurity and risk management program, and how would I know that?\u00a0 The answer is not \u201c42,\u201d to quote author Douglas Adams.\u00a0 The real answer is, map to a standard, do a gap analysis, true up, and continually maintain your program in real time.\u00a0 How do you do this?\u00a0 Typically, in healthcare, this process has been a hodgepodge of spreadsheets, tribal knowledge, and periodic yearly audits. The problem with this scenario is that it doesn\u2019t work for several reasons.\u00a0 Spreadsheets are static, tribal knowledge isn\u2019t accessible and walks out the door with employees, and audits are useless and outdated the day after the report is delivered.<\/p>

Let\u2019s look at a new way of doing things; how do we fix this?<\/h2>

One way to know if you are covering all of your cybersecurity and risk management bases is to map to a standard such as NIST, ISO, or Hitrust.\u00a0 Additionally, healthcare will have to overlay HIPAA requirements with this program.\u00a0 Many organizations do this, but only on spreadsheets and periodic audits, which yield the same problems noted above.\u00a0 Let\u2019s take a NIST\/HIPAA example, the control for multifactor authentication, which is mandated for highly sensitive systems containing protected health data or ePHI. A systems administrator can manually poll a system at a point in time and note that all users have multifactor authentication set for their accounts.\u00a0 This goes on a spreadsheet.<\/p>

Over the next month, 30 traveling nurse users will be added to the electronic health record system.\u00a0 The organization typically does not manually poll systems for compliance on a regular basis. The next validation of adherence to the multifactor authentication rule may be during the next audit period, in six months.\u00a0 The compliance adherence and the risk associated with this process are unknown for long periods of time.\u00a0 Also, this is in the CISO\u2019s spreadsheet.\u00a0 Compliance, Risk, IT, security, and HR\/training may all have their own spreadsheets that should be consolidated to show an overall risk profile.\u00a0Multiply this by the over 300+ risk items that NIST and HIPAA address.\u00a0 The time between audits is literally a black hole in knowing your risk and cybersecurity compliance.\u00a0 Not to mention your vulnerability exposure to breaches and not knowing what cybersecurity items are lacking or non-compliant.<\/p>

Now, let\u2019s look at the same example using automated Cybersecurity compliance and risk tools.\u00a0 The NIST framework, and HIPAA requirements are loaded as a framework into the tool.\u00a0 These tools are intelligent and today use AI to organize data and to anticipate activities. Data, policies, and documents relating to cybersecurity and risk management can be loaded into the system by the owners via a variety of communication methods.\u00a0 So it will be apparent what documentation the organization may be missing to meet compliance\/regulatory requirements.\u00a0 This is all accessible and noted in a common platform, one location of the formal record. Back to the multifactor authentication example.\u00a0 The automated tools out of the box, have connections into a variety of systems.\u00a0 And, they also have the ability to connect via API calls to other specific healthcare applications to pull controls.<\/p>

The tools DO NOT pull any sensitive data, thus avoiding yet another security problem for CISOs.\u00a0They merely pull the controls that a system has configured and can run tests against those controls and return compliance stats.\u00a0 So, for the multifactor authentication example, the tool would poll the ePHI-sensitive system and run a test on users to show who has multifactor authentication turned on and which accounts don\u2019t. Typically, the test will verify that all provisioned users are in compliance, but there are a couple of accounts that don\u2019t have MFA turned on.<\/p>

These will be Admin accounts and Service accounts.\u00a0 This leads to a whole other level of compliance validation around NIST and HIPAA rules around these types of accounts and how they are handled, which is also programmed into the tool.\u00a0 This test could be run anytime; it can be scheduled and repopulates the tool with the current real-time compliance data. These automated functions exist for most of the controls.<\/p>

What Can AI Do Under the Covers in Automated Risk and Cybersecurity Compliance<\/h2>