Basic Data Protection Tips to Ensure HIPAA Compliance

The HIPAA audit is almost upon us. Health and legal institutions across the country that handle patient records are preparing for a randomly chosen examination of data security policies and details. Record Grabber may or may not be selected for audit, and so will many of the organizations that we deal with every day. If you too are likely to be audited, then we have some simple tips for you to follow to minimize problems.

 

Keep Your Employees Security Training Up To Date

Many data breaches are a matter of human error, and simple errors of judgement at that. In a moment of thoughtlessness, an employee opens an email with malware attached, or fails to lock their computer screen while out of the office. These small incidents make up the majority of data security problems. Ensure your employees understand their obligations on data security and have a refresher course if necessary. It’s easy to become lax when so much else is going on.

 

Keep Your Network Security Up To Date

Whether you are a one-man band or large corporation, you need software to protect your network and the files stored on it against any form of attack. You also need to keep it up to date with the most recent virus signatures and upgrade the software package when it approaches obsolescence. This is an area where you should not cut corners; small companies are just as risk as big companies.

 

Risk Assessment

It is good business practice to conduct a risk assessment for personal safety in the workplace and you should already have one in place for data security. Risk assessments are designed to do exactly what it sounds like it is supposed to do – identify potential risks and problems. How might data be breached? What avenues are there to lose data? What can we do about each of those potential threats?

Breaches are not inevitable, but they are not rare either. It’s important to know what you and your employees should do in the result of a breach – no matter how small or large. As mentioned above, there are simple steps that employees can take to protect data, but even with the best training things can go wrong. A wrongly entered email address, a client changing postal address and you have not been kept up to date, can be considered data breaches. Everyone needs to know what to do.