The healthcare sector is a top target of cyber criminals eager to steal sensitive data and extort high ransoms. The key to thwarting costly attacks is to understand that identity is the new security perimeter. By implementing robust identity and access management (IAM), healthcare organizations can significantly enhance their security and cyber resilience.
This article explains the role of IAM in healthcare and details the most pressing IAM gaps to address. Then it reveals how IAM can help your organization ensure compliance with all of the following:
- National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF)
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
- California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
The Role of IAM in Healthcare
An Identity and Access Management (IAM) program involves a set of policies, processes, and technologies for managing users and controlling access to data, applications, and other IT resources. It typically utilizes a directory to authenticate users and authorize their access to specific resources, often based on group memberships rather than fine-grained authorizations.
Additionally, IAM systems can log user activities and can help identify suspicious behavior or policy violations when integrated with other security tools.
Key Benefits of IAM in Healthcare
A healthcare identity and access management system is essential for two main reasons. First, it helps organizations comply with regulatory requirements such as HIPAA and GDPR by providing digital identity management, enforcing access controls and maintaining required audit trails.
Second, IAM enhances the security of patient data. Unauthorized access to electronic health records can have severe consequences, including heavy fines and reputation damage for the healthcare organization and identity theft and other serious consequences for individuals. IAM helps organizations prevent improper access to sensitive healthcare data by both external attackers and insider threats — employees or other users who misuse their legitimate access, either intentionally or accidentally.
How IAM Helps Address Common Security Weaknesses
Healthcare organizations are a top target of cyber criminals because they store large volumes of sensitive data and need to recover quickly from security incidents, even if that means paying a ransom for a decryption key. Here are the main security weaknesses that threat actors exploit and how IAM can help healthcare organizations reduce their risk:
Excessive User Privileges
Healthcare organizations typically have a dynamic user base with both high staff turnover and frequent changes to the responsibilities of users. As a result, it can be difficult to ensure that each user has only the permissions they need and that accounts are promptly removed when they are no longer needed. This overprovisioning opens the door to unauthorized access.
To reduce this risk, healthcare organizations can employ role-based access control (RBAC) to streamline access rights management. RBAC is based on the reality that users with similar roles typically require access to the same resources. Therefore, organizations can define a set of roles and assign each role a set of access rights. Then provisioning or reprovisioning a user is as simple as adding and removing the right roles — rather than a time-consuming and error-prone slog of sorting through a myriad of directly assigned permissions.
Weak Password Policies
Many healthcare organizations meet only the minimum HIPAA password requirements, which require them to:
- Verify that an entity seeking access to electronic protected health information (ePHI) is who they say they are
- Implement procedures for changing, creating and protecting passwords
- Implement policies and procedures for monitoring login attempts
A great way to strengthen security is to adopt robust password policies that require employees to use strong, unique passwords for the various applications, websites, and systems they need access. To enable them to do so without risky workarounds like writing down or reusing passwords, organizations should also provide a password manager tool that will generate secure passwords and store, enter and manage them.
Slow Adoption of Zero Trust
Zero Trust is a security model for safeguarding data and infrastructure. Its central tenet is that no device, application or user should be trusted by default.
To adopt Zero Trust, organizations must constantly authenticate, authorize and validate entities before granting them access to applications and data. Implementing Zero Trust is crucial to addressing modern cybersecurity challenges like hybrid environments, remote workers, SaaS, and sophisticated ransomware threats.
Failure to Require Multifactor Authentication
Organizations use a single factor, such as a password, for authentication are more likely to suffer security breaches than those that use multifactor authentication (MFA). MFA requires users to present at least two different types of evidence for authentication:
- Something you know, such as a PIN or password
- Something you possess, such as a smartphone or badge
- Something you are, such as a fingerprint or retina scan
As part of a broader Zero Trust strategy, MFA should not cause user frustration or productivity issues. Rather, MFA is required only when the action being requested has a sufficiently high risk based on factors such as the sensitivity of the resource involved and the user’s device and location.
Failure to Secure Third-Party Access
More than half (54%) of healthcare organizations do not regularly monitor vendor access, according to a report by SecureLink and Ponemon Institute. This oversight enables threat actors to exploit security weaknesses to access a vendor’s network and gain access to its customers’ environments. To reduce risk, healthcare organizations need to closely audit the activity of all vendors and service providers.
Insufficient Threat Detection and Response Capabilities
Many healthcare organizations do not discover that their systems have been hacked until months after the initial intrusion. For example, they detect ransomware attacks only after data encryption is complete and a ransom note demanding payment for a decryption key appears.
To help, organizations can adopt log management and intrusion detection solutions that spot anomalous activity, analyze it, and alert IT teams about likely threats so they can respond promptly to minimize damage.
How IAM Helps with Compliance
When it comes to regulations and standards like GDPR and NIST, identity and access management can be a game-changer. Here are some of the key ways that IAM can help organizations ensure compliance with common security frameworks and mandates.
NIST CSF
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework was created to help organizations of all sizes better understand, reduce and manage cybersecurity risk to safeguard their data and networks. While the NIST CSF is voluntary, it is invaluable for healthcare organizations looking to boost their cybersecurity posture. Here’s how some of its guidelines align with IAM in healthcare:
- Identity proofing — The NIST CSF recommends carefully establishing that a subject is who they claim to be before granting access to systems and data.
- Access control policies — The framework also emphasizes implementing strong policies to manage access to sensitive data and other resources, which can include granular access controls based on Zero Trust principles. It also encourages continuous monitoring of access activity to enable prompt threat detection and response.
- Multifactor authentication (MFA) — The NIST CSF recommends using MFA to dramatically reduce the risk from compromised credentials.
GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation applies to all organizations that store or process data about EU residents, even if they do not directly conduct business in any member state. A strong IAM strategy can help healthcare organizations with the core data privacy requirements of the GDPR. In addition, implement the following practices:
- Make sure your team considers privacy requirements from the beginning of a project and regularly reevaluates them.
- Retain detailed records of any conversations about potential data breaches but do not include specific examples of personal data. You should always collect as little data as possible due to the GDPR principle of data minimization.
- Complete a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) for every new project that may pose a “high risk” to personal information. A DPIA involves systematically identifying, analyzing and minimizing the data protection challenges for a proposed project.
- Follow consent rights. The GDPR requires getting users’ consent before gathering or using their information. Consent must be “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous.”
CCPA and CPRA
The California Consumer Privacy Act was passed in 2020 and amended by the California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act (CPRA), which came into effect in 2023. The CPRA applies to for-profit businesses that collect personal data from California residents and meet the certain revenue or data processing thresholds.
Like the GDPR, the CPRA gives data subjects many rights, including the right to:
- Know and access their personal data
- Request deletion of their data
- Opt out of the sale of their data
- Be free from discrimination
- Request rectification of their data
- Limit the use and disclosure of their sensitive personal information
Certain IAM features can facilitate CPRA compliance. Here’s how:
- Managing user access to regulated data — IAM systems give healthcare companies centralized control over user access to sensitive data, including personal information subject to CPRA regulations.
- Monitoring activity around regulated data — IAM solutions typically include robust auditing of user activity, so healthcare organizations can track who accesses what data and respond promptly to suspicious behavior to protect data regulated by the CPRA and other mandates.
- Fulfilling data subject requests — IAM solutions help automate the work of processing user requests to know what data a healthcare organization stores about them and to correct or delete that data.
HIPAA
HIPAA is a US federal law that protects sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient’s knowledge or consent. IAM can help organizations comply with the following HIPAA requirements:
- Encryption of ePHI — IAM solutions often offer encryption mechanisms to protect the confidentiality of PHI during storage and transmission.
- Emergency access procedures — IAM solutions with emergency access protocols enable designated personnel to quickly access ePHI during critical times, such as system failures or natural disasters, while maintaining security controls.
- Access control and audit trails — IAM can help organizations limit user access to ePHI in accordance with the principle of least privilege, enforce strong authentication and authorization controls, and log activity as required by HIPAA.
- Enforce minimum necessary use and disclosure — HIPAA’s Privacy Rule requires covered entities to limit the use and disclosure of PHI to the minimum necessary for accomplishing the intended purpose. An IAM system that provides RBAC to enable granular access controls can help healthcare organizations comply with this rule.
Conclusion
Complying with government regulations and best-practice cybersecurity frameworks can be challenging for any healthcare organization. Implementation of a robust IAM solution provides a solid foundation for identifying and mitigating risk across the cybersecurity lifecycle.
How Netwrix Can Help
Netwrix IAM solutions empower healthcare organizations to both strengthen cybersecurity and ensure compliance with relevant frameworks and regulations. In particular, they help these entities:
- Achieve, maintain and prove compliance — Real-time monitoring and robust reporting that simplify the work of fulfilling requirements and passing audits.
- Reduce the risk of data breaches — The Netwrix solution helps organizations strictly limit access to sensitive data to minimize the potential for breaches.
- Improve visibility into access and activity — Gain clear insights into data access patterns, enhancing security and operational decision-making.
- Detect and respond to threats swiftly — Quickly identify and mitigate threats with advanced detection and response capabilities.
- Enhance user productivity — Streamline identity and access management, allowing healthcare professionals to focus more on patient care.
With Netwrix IAM solutions, healthcare organizations can balance strong security with the dynamic needs of a modern healthcare environment.
