How Healthcare Providers Use WolfPAC to Improve Their HIPPA Compliance & Cybersecurity Posture
A double whammy of complex regulatory requirements and rapidly evolving security and privacy threats create a seemingly insurmountable problem for healthcare providers.
- Cyberattacks are the new normal as healthcare emerges as the most common industry sector targeted by bad actors.
- Healthcare is a highly regulated industry with numerous compliance requirements, such as HIPAA, HITECH, and contractual requirements like HITRUST
- Healthcare compliance teams are stretched thin with over half of healthcare organizations facing constraints and expecting the problem to worsen.
As a result, healthcare providers need an experienced risk management partner they can trust to help keep their organizations and patients safe.
How WolfPAC Helps Healthcare Providers
WolfPAC’s modular GRC platform offers an efficient, automated approach to IT risk assessments, vendor management, and business continuity planning. Paired with our world-class professional services offering, WolfPAC for Healthcare ensures a streamlined, year-over-year improvement in your security posture and compliance readiness.
On a high level, WolfPAC helps healthcare providers:
- Prevent cyber-attacks and safeguard their IT infrastructure.
- Reduce their exposure to 3rd and 4th party data breach risk.
- Save time, money, and headaches by streamlining their risk assessment processes.
- Ensure operational resilience and system uptime.
WolfPAC identifies threats and control gaps in the business associates and technologies that touch PHI, allowing your organization to mitigate associated risks properly. In addition, our certified IT Risk Management advisors understand your unique risk and compliance needs, helping you maintain HITRUST and HIPAA requirements for secure patient health information (PHI).
Mini-Case Studies
Let’s dive into two real-life scenarios where WolfPAC & Wolf & Company helped healthcare providers modernize and improve their operational risk management programs.
Problem #1: Data Breach Risk & Vendor Risk Complexity
Background: A community-based health system serving nearly one billion residents.
Challenges: The client contends with a multitude of factors—employees, servers, medical devices, and contractors—all potential avenues for breaches. The sheer scale and complexity demand vigilance.
Given the prevalent risk of third-party breaches in healthcare, proper risk management is paramount. The customer encounters incidents where its vendors face security breaches several times a month. As a result, ensuring the safety of their data when shared with third parties is imperative.
Solution: The client leveraged WolfPAC’s 3rd Party Risk Management Software and Wolf & Company’s Virtual Vendor Management (vVMO) Services to modernize and enhance its TPRM program.
Results:
WolfPAC helped the client build a world-class vendor risk management program that:
- Provides 360-degree visibility into its vendor relationships and dependencies.
- Significantly reduces its exposure to 3rd and 4th party data breach risk.
- Helps build an operational risk management program that protects the organization and its patients, and their personal data.
Thanks to the platform’s efficiency, the client can broaden the scope of its risk management focus beyond high-risk applications like EPIC. They now include applications handling Protected Health Information (PHI) and Personally Identifiable Information (PII), such as PeopleSoft and HR applications, aligning with banking standards.
What the Customer Said:
“Our investment rationale extends beyond mere streamlining of vendor management processes. It encompasses a broader commitment to modernizing and fortifying our risk management framework, ensuring we remain resilient in the face of evolving threats.”
Problem #2: Old and Outdated Risk Assessment Processes
Background: A not-for-profit, charitable, community-based health system with three hospitals.
Challenges: Before working with WolfPAC, the client’s risk assessment process was archaic, consisting of a mere checklist in a spreadsheet format. It lacked comprehensiveness, serving more as a checkbox exercise. This dynamic left the client unable to properly identify, risk assess, and rate vendors. As a result, its risk management program wasn’t able to meet the organization’s stringent patient protection needs and left them open to breaches and potential regulatory fines.
Solution: The customer implemented the WolfPAC platform to help bring its risk assessment process out of the dark ages.
Results: Transitioning to WolfPAC has revolutionized the client’s approach to risk assessments, offering a more robust and repeatable process. This client can now focus on reviewing changes and improvements, making the entire process more efficient.
What the Customer Said:
“This expanded approach helps us pinpoint security vulnerabilities and control weaknesses. Our process evolves each year, enhancing our overall risk assessment capabilities. This iterative refinement has been instrumental in streamlining our operations.”
The Perfect Healthcare Risk Management Solution
WolfPAC for Healthcare automates the core activities needed to meet your compliance obligations in three critical areas:
1.) Information Technology
Quickly and easily assess the risk of your core IT assets using the nationally recognized NIST risk assessment framework. Whether it’s access control, remote access, or cybersecurity, you can quickly identify gaps and develop corrective action plans.
2.) Vendor Management
Organize and manage all your vendors by risk level, store contracts, track key data points (like renewal dates), and build a streamlined vendor management program.
3.) Business Continuity Management
Analyze potential threats, prioritize recovery responsibilities, and manage updates in one centralized solution—and develop a comprehensive program that includes all core disciplines of business continuity, including business impact analysis, risk assessment, plan development, and procedure documentation.
Customer Quote:
“Unlike committing to comprehensive ServiceNow modules, which can be cost-prohibitive and resource-intensive, adopting WolfPAC offers a more pragmatic and scalable solution tailored to our specific needs.”
Want to learn more about how WolfPAC helps the nation’s leading healthcare organizations build modern, scalable risk management programs that stand up to the threats of today and tomorrow?
Contact us today to speak with one of our risk management experts.
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More About WolfPAC: WolfPAC Integrated Risk Management® is a fully integrated suite of software and expert advisory services designed to make the hard work associated with risk management easier. Our low-friction platform keeps you one step ahead of emerging risks and ensures that regulators and executives are 100% satisfied with your reporting.
