Safend for HIPAA Compliance

As enforcement tightens and liability grows exponentially, maintaining HIPAA compliance has become mission-critical for IT departments in the healthcare industry.

With mobile computing firmly integrated into the workplace, Electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) can no longer remain safe behind the corporate firewall. In today's fast-changing healthcare climate, easy access to ePHI is crucial for caregivers. However, both the wireless networks that facilitate caregiving on the move, and the popularity of removable storage devices represent the weakest links in data security - increasing the likelihood of data leakage, and potential but costly HIPAA violations.

As a result, today's primary healthcare IT challenge is: how to make ePHI readily available to caregivers, while still maintaining HIPAA compliance?

Safend's Data Protection Suite is comprised of Safend Protector, Encryptor,
Reporter, Inspector and Auditor, designed from the ground up to help healthcare organizations meet the challenges of HIPAA. Seamlessly integrating with existing solutions, Safend monitors and controls the flow of information to and from any endpoint. Safend provides healthcare organizations with detailed visibility and granular control over data transfer from the endpoint via wireless ports and all physical storage devices, providing a comprehensive audit trail of endpoint activity and simultaneously protecting against data leakage.

Meeting the Challenges of HIPAA

Safend’s solutions protect sensitive patient information, addressing core HIPAA requirements, such as:

• Evaluate vulnerabilities
  HIPAA requires organizations handling ePHI to conduct an accurate and thorough assessment of potential risks and vulnerabilities to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data.  Further, they are required to implement mechanisms that record and examine activity in systems that contain or use ePHI.
  
  Safend Data Protection Suite, provides organizations with immediate knowledge of where sensitive data resides, whether that be on a removable media, CD, DVD, laptop or in a file share. Safend's Data Protection Suite reports the attachment of unauthorized external devices, monitors the information flow in accordance with individual user access policies, and alerts administrators of attempted violations – while comprehensively logging all activity for an ongoing and complete audit trail.
  
  
• Defining access at all endpoints
  HIPAA mandates that organizations assume responsibility for the security of ePHI entering and leaving the computing environment, regardless of physical location. Utilizing Safend, IT departments can define new and augment existing user access control policies. These policies are easily enforced and extended across all endpoints and over all physical, wireless, and removable storage devices. This enables productivity via the ongoing flow of ePHI, while still ensuring HIPAA compliance.
  
• Maintaining and updating access
  The Safend Management Console enables system administrators to check user access rights periodically, another HIPAA requirement. Safend transfers these sensitive credentials using a secure SSL channel, so remote systems can be administered securely from a single location
  
• Ongoing policy enforcement
  Safend Protector enforces endpoint security policies by monitoring real-time traffic and applying HIPAA-compliant, highly-granular security policies over all physical, wireless and removable storage interfaces. Safend can further ensure that mobile users and data are secure by encrypting any data written to removable storage devices or by enforcing the use of hardware encrypted flash drives only.

For more information about how Safend facilitates HIPAA compliance, please download the Achieving HIPAA Compliance with Safend Data Protection Suite white paper.