Healthcare organizations must use IAM as an integral part of their IT infrastructure in order to cope with challenges in various fields, such as compliance, regulations, cybersecurity, and Digital Transformation. In this respect, IAM not only serves as a security technology but also as a mechanism that helps responding to new business challenges and drivers.
While every industry currently has to deal with the disruptive nature of the Digital Transformation and ever-increasing cyberattacks, some of the developments are endemic to healthcare organizations. For instance, complying with new regulations such as Electronic Prescribing for Controlled Substances (EPCS) or the well-known Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Due to their sensitivity, patient data are a highly valuable target for hackers, which is why the healthcare industry is among the most regulated ones.
In order to protect sensitive patient data, it is inevitable for any given healthcare organization to implement a strong Identity and Access Management as a central pillar of the IT infrastructure. Control and restriction of access with the help of a sophisticated IAM is a prerequisite to the protection of information that network firewalls and single sign-on (SSO) cannot deliver.
Altogether, there are five areas a strong IAM infrastructure will bolster:
- Compliance & Regulations
- Security
- Organizational & Financial Challenges
- M&A Activity
- Digital Transformation
Compliance & Regulations: In recent years, the regulatory bar that healthcare organizations have to comply with has been raised. HIPAA, ECPS and state-level regulations, like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) are just a few. The regulations have strong authentication and refined access control at their core. They are complemented by a detailed registration of user activities. In stark contrast to other industries, healthcare providers may find themselves in emergency situations, when data must be accessed quickly. IAM delivers the infrastructure for such regulation-compliant emergency access processes.
Security: As cyberattacks rise in number and intensity, organizations have to take precautions more than ever. IT security teams in healthcare organizations must prioritize this kind of risk, especially regarding incidences of ransomware attacks against hospitals.
Most healthcare organizations still focus too little on detection while being caught up in prevention. Despite external prevention being necessary, it does not protect against internal attacks. Therefore, it is unavoidable to restrict access to sensitive data and critical infrastructure, particularly when the attacker is already in the system. IAM does not replace firewalls and other preventive measures but should always go hand in hand with them.
Organizational & Financial Challenges: Apart from having to care for their patients’ wellbeing, healthcare organizations, ultimately, are also businesses and should keep an eye on profits. Here, IAM helps increasing efficiency and convenience for user experience, for instance with an SSO portal.
The number of user types accessing systems and data within healthcare organizations is sheer incalculable: Doctors, nurses, students, patients are just a few and the number is growing. The careful distribution of user rights has its litmus test when emergency situations arise and EMR data must be accessed quickly.
Like any other kind of business, healthcare businesses often lack the resources and ownership for IAM. The latter must be clearly defined, and projects need support from sponsors within the organization.
M&A Activity: Healthcare is not exempt from M&A activity and IAM infrastructures should be designed to make a merger go as smoothly as possible. The merging organizations must federate identities and give employees, patients, and contractors adequate levels of access.
Digital Transformation: Telemedicine, EMR, and Patient Access Management result in an increase in identities as well as in complexity in access entitlements which must be controlled. The role of IAM is to support these processes in working together seamlessly. Where SSO is not enough, IAM gains center stage: Provisioning and deprovisioning of accounts, management of access entitlements, audit and governance, and granular access control.
As healthcare services become more digitalized and “consumerized”, it is IAM that must support these hybrid environments and multi-cloud infrastructures. Different types of users have different types of devices, all of which has to be considered when setting up an IAM solution, especially one that goes beyond SSO. This is the only way to address the challenges of digitization and provide secure access at the same time. Ultimately, IAM is the foundation for supporting the consumerization of healthcare businesses.
