It’s nice to finally see organizations that are transitioning to the cloud take security more seriously. The days of self-certification or claiming that you are secure and HIPAA compliant are rapidly fading away.
For organizations without proper data protection and security certifications in place, it’s not a matter of if a data breach will occur – but when. Network and technical vulnerabilities, a lack of regulatory compliance, unencrypted information, and weak credentials all play a part in putting an organization at risk.
Today, the cost of these data breaches come with a hefty price tag – an average of $9.44 million in the U.S. alone, according to IBM Security’s 2022 Cost of a Data Breach Report. Not surprising, the healthcare industry gets hit the hardest with an average of $10.1 million per data breach.
In just the first six months of 2022, the healthcare sector suffered about 337 breaches according to Fortified Health Security’s mid-year report. More than 19 million records were implicated. In addition to the monetary costs stemming from a data breach, organizations also face remediation activities, regulatory inquiries, service disruptions, and a hit to their reputation.
So, how can a data breach be prevented? The first step is to utilize solutions and services that meet strict regulatory compliance standards. Cloud-based fax solutions, for example, make it possible for organizations to keep pace with the myriad of information being transmitted every day while offering more security and reliability than email and legacy platforms ever could.
When choosing a cloud-based fax service provider, it’s important for healthcare organizations to take HITRUST CSF® certification, PCI, and SOC 2® compliance into consideration to ensure that all regulatory compliance standards for data protection are met. The days of an organization simply saying “We are HIPAA compliant” without proving it are long gone. Self-attestations or self-audits should be a red flag to any organization that processes confidential information.
Organizations must require their cloud vendors to be third-party audited. Independent software vendors (ISVs) that offer products utilizing cloud services must also do their due diligence and ensure that their cloud services provider has third-party certifications such as HITRUST or PCI DSS compliance to protect their customers’ data and their reputation as a trusted vendor. Many ISVs utilize etherFAX on the backend due to our commitment to meeting these standards.
etherFAX services operate in a HIPAA and SOC 2® compliant environment that is both HITRUST CSF® and PCI DSS certified. We have also implemented multiple defense-in-depth strategies into our patented etherFAX technology such as end-to-end encryption to guarantee that patient data and business-critical information remain protected. We spend a significant amount of money and time to ensure all data that traverses our network meets these rigorous standards.
Earlier this year, we achieved HITRUST Risk-based, 2-year Certification, further validating our commitment to meeting key regulations and protecting sensitive information. The r2 Assessment offers coverage against NIST SP 800-53, NIST CSF, ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, FISMA, FTC Red Flags Rule Compliance, MARS-E Requirements, PCI DSS, CCPA, GDPR, AICPA Trust Services Criteria for Security, Confidentiality and Availability, plus more than 30 other industry-recognized frameworks, standards, and authoritative sources.
