Are you worried about completing your HIPAA risk assessment? Many organizations are. To provide you with guidance, 5 tips on how to complete a risk assessment are discussed.
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Educate yourself on the HIPAA Security Rule
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Identify risks and vulnerabilities
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Create and implement remediation plans
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Use a risk assessment tool
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Repeat annually
How to Complete a Risk Assessment
Completing your risk assessment can be a daunting task. Look to these 5 tips for guidance on how to complete a risk assessment.
1. Educate Yourself on the HIPAA Security Rule
Before completing your security risk assessment (SRA) it is important to understand the HIPAA Security Rule. The HIPAA Security Rule requires you to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of protected health information (PHI). This is the purpose of conducting a risk assessment. An SRA assesses your current security practices against HIPAA standards, finding gaps in compliance.
2. Identify Risks and Vulnerabilities
By completing your SRA, risks and vulnerabilities are identified. You must document these and determine the level of risk they pose, the likelihood of threat occurrence, and the potential impact of the threat. By doing so, you can prepare your organization for threats, and develop contingency plans enabling you to recover quickly from an incident.
3. Create and Implement Remediation Plans
To address your deficiencies, you must create remediation plans. Remediation plans provide guidelines for how you will bolster your security practices to protect against threats and vulnerabilities. They should be specific and include how deficiencies will be addressed and timelines for remediation.
4. Use a Risk Assessment Tool
You may be thinking, all of this sounds complicated. Well, you wouldn’t be wrong. That’s why we provide security risk management software tools. Compliancy Group offers clients a guided risk assessment, as well as all other required HIPAA self-audits. When you work with Compliancy Group you can be confident that you have sufficiently completed your risk assessment, and addressed your deficiencies with customized remediation plans.
5. Repeat Annually
As risks and vulnerabilities are constantly evolving, you are required to complete a risk assessment annually. By doing so, any new threats or vulnerabilities can be addressed, making your organization, patients, and clients more secure.
