By Kimberly Connella | September 1, 2020 | 0 Comments
A HIPAA risk assessment is an evaluation of your healthcare organization that ensures you are compliant with HIPAA’s administrative, physical, and technical requirements.
The HIPAA risk assessment requirement was first introduced in 2003 in the original HIPAA Privacy Rule. Then, was extended to include administrative, physical, and technical safeguards in the HIPAA Security Rule.
In addition, the Final Omnibus Rule further extended the requirement of a risk assessment to Business Associates of health care organizations. For instance, businesses that work with health care organizations and handle, store, or transmit PHI, are also required to take a security risk assessment.
The objective of the HIPAA assessment is to reveal weaknesses in the way you create, store, and handle protected health information (PHI) within your organization.
HIPAA law requires every healthcare organization or covered entity that deals with PHI to complete a HIPAA risk assessment.
See: aNetwork’s Free HIPAA Security Risk Assessment
Essentially, a HIPAA risk assessment works by analyzing your policies, processes, systems, and methods in order to identify any weaknesses. As a result, your IT team or a trusted third-party can work to investigate and eliminate any risks to PHI.
Furthermore, the risk assessment tests your organization’s ability to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of PHI.
Specifically, the HIPAA risk assessment enables businesses to achieve the following:
As well as many more deliverables intended to protect PHI. However, a HIPAA assessment is not a one-time exercise. HIPAA compliance is a process. It requires periodic assessments and a strong security foundation.
Furthermore, it requires aligning your technology, people, and business leaders to protect PHI.
HIPAA non-compliance can have costly consequences for health care organizations and the covered entities they work with.
In most cases today, the “Did Not Know” HIPAA violation category is rare. For instance, when businesses suffer from a security incident or PHI breach, ignorance is no longer an excuse. HIPAA expects healthcare organizations to understand and comply with their obligation to protect PHI.
The severity of fines directly correlates with the extent of the PHI breach and the level of negligence involved. As a result, HIPAA violations can range from a slap on the wrist to shutting the doors of your practice indefinitely.
Therefore, HIPAA compliance is important for healthcare organizations and covered entities.
aNetwork’s offers a free HIPAA security risk assessment (SRA) tool. Our HIPAA SRA tool is designed for healthcare organizations and their business associates. It enables those responsible for PHI to evaluate their compliance with HIPAA’s administrative, physical, and technical requirements.
It is a free 10-20 minute questionnaire that provides an in-depth review of your organization’s HIPAA compliance.
Furthermore, aNetworks has the only automated, no registration required, HIPAA SRA tool available online.
Our tool was developed and tested by our leading cyber security analysts and HIPAA compliance experts to ensure accurate and thorough results. If you are looking for more information on what a HIPAA security risk assessment is, then read here.
With aNetwork’s free tool, business leaders or IT staff simply fill out a questionnaire that reviews all aspects of your organization’s network and compares the data against HIPAA’s compliance framework.
Specifically, the objective of the HIPAA risk assessment is to reveal weaknesses in the way you create, store, and handle protected health information (PHI) within your organization.
HIPAA requires every healthcare organization or covered entity that deals with PHI to complete a HIPAA risk assessment.
Our free SRA tool covers your current policies, controls, procedures, and more. In short, our HIPAA SRA tool tests your organization’s ability to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of PHI.
Our HIPAA risk assessment tool automatically compiles and presents a score of your network’s security posture and HIPAA compliance strength based on your answers.
Furthermore, it automatically provides insights into which weaknesses in your network pose the most critical threats. Specifically, our tool triages your network’s vulnerabilities from high risk to low risk.
As a result, business leaders feel less overwhelmed and have a clear picture of which vulnerabilities should be resolved first.
Finally, our HIPAA compliance experts go through your security risk assessment with you to address compliance gaps and resolve vulnerabilities.
aNetwork’s offers a free HIPAA security risk assessment (SRA) tool.
Our HIPAA SRA tool is designed for healthcare organizations and their business associates. It enables those responsible for PHI to evaluate their compliance with HIPAA’s administrative, physical, and technical requirements.
Our free SRA tool covers your current policies, controls, procedures, and more. In short, our HIPAA security assessment tool tests your organization’s ability to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of PHI.
If your organization is looking for help meeting HIPAA compliance or partaking in a HIPAA assessment, then aNetworks is here to help. Our compliance experts identify gaps in your compliance and determine, implement, and test security measures and controls to fix them.
With our team of experts, you can become audit-ready in no time.
If you are interested in learning more about our compliance management, then please contact us below.
Otherwise, you can call us directly at 855-459-6600.
Furthermore, if you are looking for more information, then check out our HIPAA compliance 2020 checklist.
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