A recent study conducted by the consultancy firm CynergisTek has revealed healthcare organizations are not in conformance with NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) controls and the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules.
For the study, CynergisTek analyzed the results of assessments at almost 600 healthcare organizations against NIST CSF and the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules.
The NIST CSF is a voluntary framework, but the standards and best practices help organizations manage cyber risks. Healthcare organizations that are not in conformance with CSF controls face a higher risk of experiencing a cyberattack or data breach. On average, healthcare organizations were only in conformance with 47% of NIST CSF controls. Conformance has only increased by 2% in the past year.
Assisted living organizations had the highest level of conformance with NIST CSF (95%), followed by payers (86%), and accountable care organizations (73%). Business associates of HIPAA covered entities only had an average conformance level of 48%. Physician groups had the lowest level of conformance (36%).
Out of the five core functions of the NIST CSF – Identify, detect, protect, respond, and recover – conformance was lowest for detect.
Even though conformance with the HIPAA Security Rule has been mandatory for the past 14 years, many healthcare organizations were found to be falling short. On average, healthcare organizations were found to be in conformance with 72% of HIPAA Security Rule requirements, which was 2% lower than last year. Critical access hospitals fared the worst with an average of 67% conformance.
Even when organizations were complying with HIPAA Rules, significant security gaps were identified, which clearly demonstrated compliance does not necessarily equate to security.
Compliance with the requirements of the HIPAA Privacy Rule was better, but there is still significant room for improvement. On average, healthcare organizations were complying with 77% of HIPAA Privacy Rule provisions. Many organizations had missing policies and procedures and improper postings. More than 60% of assessments revealed gaps in the maintenance of written policies and procedures related to the use and release of protected health information.
Conformance with the HIPAA Privacy Rule increased year over year for payers and physician groups, but declined for hospitals and health systems, falling from 94% in 2017 to 72% in 2018. CynergisTek explained this fall as most likely being due to higher numbers of assessments being performed on hospitals and health systems in 2018.
CynergisTek also found that insider breaches continue to be a major challenge for healthcare organizations. Insiders were responsible for 28% of healthcare data breaches in 2018 and, on average, those breaches took 255 days to detect. 74% of cases involved employees accessing the health records of household members, 10% involved accessing the records of VIPs that were treated at the hospital. 8% of cases involved accessing the health records of co-workers and 8% involved accessing neighbors’ health records.
Business associates were found to be a major security risk. They were involved in 20% of healthcare data breaches in 2018. CynergisTek found that in many cases, healthcare organizations were not proactively assessing their vendors, even those that are medium to high risk. The most common business associate failures were related to risk assessments, governance, and access management.
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