Among many security and compliance experts, HITRUST has become a well-known name with a lot of weight behind it. But before we get into why it is important, let’s talk about what, exactly, HITRUST is.
What is HITRUST?
It is a security, privacy, and risk management firm that was founded in 2007. It created the HITRUST CSF to offer enterprises complete security and privacy approach for managing data, compliance, and risk. It is now the most extensively used security and privacy framework across sectors worldwide.
By certifying against the Health Information Trust Alliance CSF, an organization may verify its compliance with the framework to anybody who requires assurance, ranging from healthcare providers, hospitals, and insurance companies to any other institution.
Framework and Regulations
The nice thing about HITRUST is that it has mapped various frameworks and regulations, such as those established by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), into a single central control repository. Being in compliance with the Health Information Trust Alliance CSF framework allows you to be in compliance with all of these other frameworks and standards, reducing the amount of time and effort your business must spend on compliance each year.
Consider how pleasant it would be to know that your business is in compliance with HIPAA or any other regulatory obligation by doing a single evaluation.
Why HITRUST matters?
It is important because it allows you to manage risk, lower the likelihood of a data breach, and demonstrate to third parties that you take security and compliance seriously.
It contains 19 domains that are evaluated throughout the Health Information Trust Alliance CSF Certification process. These domains address a wide range of security and privacy issues. Their ultimate objective is to ensure that you have all of the required controls in place to dramatically limit the risk that your business faces on a daily basis.
Examples
It wants to make sure your organisation is doing things like securing mobile devices, releasing patches to prevent hackers from exposing a vulnerability and gaining access to your systems, reviewing your vendors’ security programmes to ensure your data is safe, and restricting who has elevated network privileges. It wants to make certain that you have business continuity, catastrophe recovery, and breach response strategies in place.
It CSF Certification allows your company to identify current holes in its controls and determine what steps to take to repair those gaps and decrease risk.
Key Legislations
The HITRUST CSF has the unique benefit of being a continuous programme. You recertify every two years, and in the interval, you undertake an interim exam in which you randomly choose various controls and verify whether they are still being followed. This manner, you may gain yearly assurance that your controls are in place and functioning properly, and that you are in compliance with key legislation.
So you can understand why Health Information Trust Alliance has considerable clout – and why many businesses seek CSF Certification from third-party providers they engage with. If you handle any sort of personally identifiable information (PII), whether you are a hospital, insurance business, technology firm, or other type of service provider, gaining Health Information Trust Alliance CSF certification is essential.
What else you should know about HITRUST?
HITRUST offers two types of assessments
The first step is to analyze your readiness (sometimes called a gap assessment or a self-assessment). It determines what you already have in place that satisfies the HITRUST CSF standards and what you don’t. Furthermore, it identifies what you need to do to close any gaps.
The second need for HITRUST CSF Certification is a validated evaluation. Health Information Trust Alliance Approved External Assessor must conduct it. The assessor uses the CSF evaluation technique, and the controls are rated using its control maturity approach.
Process
CSF is a web-based assessment tool developed by HITRUST that assists enterprises in tracking and streamlining the full compliance and risk management process, including filling out parameters, establishing scope, and submitting evidence. External Assessors utilize the same tool to perform validated assessments.
Working with an assessor like Roguelogics from the beginning will assist enhance your organization’s efficiency and knowledge because they understand Trust Alliance and can help you through the requirements and the entire procedure.
What is HITRUST; What is CSF Certification?
In 2007, it was established as a non-profit organization. Various stakeholders and cybersecurity specialists from the healthcare and IT areas aspired to build a single cyber defense framework that incorporated many of the features of existing compliance guides.
The CSF serves as the foundation for all of the services and activities provided by the HITRUST Alliance and its for-profit subsidiary, its Services Corp. The CSF, in particular, provides a unique, hybrid approach focused on risk and compliance that is ideal for businesses of all sizes.
The Top Five Advantages of HITRUST Certification
To address the dangers that healthcare firms confront, the trust Alliance created the Common Security Framework (CSF), which allows businesses to certify their cybersecurity.
This tutorial will go over five of the most important reasons why all medical-related businesses should consider its CSF Certification:
- Management of risks and vulnerabilities
- Compliance vigilance and effectiveness
- Comprehensive cybersecurity safeguards
- Scalability, adaptability, and usability
- Certification and implementation optimization
By the end of this section, you’ll know everything there is to know about the advantages.
Benefit 1- Robust risk and vulnerability management
Programmatically understanding, restricting, and responding to risks and vulnerabilities is a critical component of cybersecurity. It is also an important component of the broader HITRUST Approach.
Its divides the risk management framework into four significant steps:
- Risk identification and definition – The first and most crucial step is to detect any threats to information security. This includes outlining the protection requirements associated with risk and potential consequences.
- Controls specification – Once the risks identify, you must describe the specific cybersecurity controls that can eliminate or reduce them (see below).
- Implement the control through rapid enforcement and eliminate long-term management until risks.
Benefit No. 2: Compliance and Efficiency
The HITRUST CSF not only helps assure quality risk management but also helps firms prepare for compliance with a wide range of legally mandated criteria. HITRUST CSF not only informs but also encompasses other regulatory and widely applicable frameworks, including but not limited to:
- NIST Framework for Cybersecurity
- Data Security Standard PCI
- HITECH and HIPAA
- COBIT ISACA
Benefit 3rd: Comprehensive Cybersecurity Protections
The HITRUST CSF addresses far more than risk and compliance. It’s one of the most significant ways to keep your firm safe with a scope that dwarfs other frameworks.
The CSF version 9.4 includes 14 control domains or categories. Forty-nine total control objectives are within these 14 domains, including over 150 different controls.
4th Benefit: Scalability, Versatility, and Accessibility
In addition to the sheer breadth and depth of security stated above, a significant advantage is an extent to which CSF makes powerful cyber defense easily accessible to businesses.
The following is an outline of how to exploit the CSF provided by HITRUST:
- The framework responds to and informs user and stakeholder feedback.
- Prescriptive requirements offer clear instructions about how to implement them.
- Alternate control choices, as well as adaptations to accommodate changes, are permitted.
- Controls scale based on firm size, nature, complexity, and other criteria.
- Multiple control implementation levels consider the company’s scale and risk profile.
Benefit #5: Optimized Implementation and Certification
Finally, one of the most accessible aspects of its CSF certification is how streamlined and straightforward the official assessment and certification processes may be.
Your firm can achieve three levels of CSF Assurance:
- Self-evaluation
- Validate CSF
- CSF certification
Professional HITRUST Certification and Cybersecurity
With all of the advantages listed above, there’s no reason why your healthcare organization shouldn’t get HITRUST CSF certified. The single system provides exceptional risk management and comprehensive cybersecurity while also making it easier to meet all of your regulatory obligations. Furthermore, you may adjust CSF to your company’s specific needs, and certification is straightforward.
Roguelogics does more than simply assist with HITRUST; we’ve spent a decade providing a wide range of cybersecurity solutions to businesses in every industry. We can help you with any of your cyber defense requirements.
Contact Roguelogics immediately to get all the benefits of HITRUST certification, plus a bunch of other cybersecurity perks!