Healthcare IT can best be explained as technology that allows the secure exchange of medical and patient information between healthcare providers, patients, insurers, and other administrative operations.
With the rapid increase of healthcare companies adopting cloud technology to share files and store private data, the need to involve managed service providers to assure full compliance of HIPAA is essential.
Here are four ways that your managed services IT provider should be expected to help maintain HIPAA compliance:
- Encryption. Your managed services provider should make sure that all your devices—including laptops, tablets, and mobile devices—are encrypted. This is the best way to secure your data. And, given that mobile malware is on the rise, you will want to make it a top priority.
- Set up a reporting process. A reporting process will allow you to better manage encryption. You should be able to log in and see when the last time a mobile device was encrypted so that, in the event it were stolen, you would know whether or not it would need to be reported as a breach.
- Secure and audit employee’s access. Conducting permissions’ audits of who is accessing data and what type of data your employees should have access to when away from the office will enable you to document, report, and stop any suspicious activity.
- Establish a password policy. Your managed services provider should help you create strong passwords, change them regularly, and make sure password restrictions and protocols are enforced.
