Cyber Defense eMagazine May Edition for 2022

Tips for Implementing HITRUST for Healthcare Providers
By Philip Jones, Mazars, Director of Security - Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Data
Privacy Officer (DPO) for Healthcare
The need for effective and quality healthcare services has never been more apparent than during the
global COVID-19 pandemic when our health infrastructure was put to the ultimate test. We learned that
these life-critical services need continual technology investment to meet evolving patient needs, such as
the exploding demand for telehealth solutions we've seen in the last two years. However, increased
technology brings increased data privacy concerns, especially in legacy healthcare systems, as
cybercriminals look to exploit vulnerabilities within patient data storage.
In fact, according to a 2021 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, the health industry is one of the
sectors experiencing the highest amount of data breaches. As of mid-February 2022, there have already
been almost 500 confirmed health care breaches.
One initiative meant to combat this is the Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST), a commonly
accepted and highly recommended security framework that guides organizations on establishing controls
to meet regulatory compliance and build a security program to protect operations from attacks. It was
founded to help organizations secure operations, manage risk, and solve nuanced issues plaguing
today's healthcare industry. HITRUST demonstrates healthcare compliance along with a NIST risk score
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