Following up on a settlement yesterday that was HHS’s first enforcement action under OCR’s Risk Analysis Initiative, HHS OCR today released a security risk assessment tool. Here is their statement about it:
Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy (ASTP) are pleased to announce the release of version 3.5 of the Security Risk Assessment (SRA) Tool. The SRA Tool is designed to aid small and medium-sized health care organizations in their efforts to identify and assess potential risks and vulnerabilities to electronic protected health information (ePHI) when conducting a risk analysis as required by the HIPAA Security Rule. Conducting an accurate and thorough risk analysis is a foundational activity to protect ePHI and comply with the HIPAA Security Rule.
As hacking and ransomware attacks continue to increase within the health care sector, it’s more important than ever for HIPAA covered entities and their business associates to improve their cybersecurity posture and compliance with the HIPAA Security Rule to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of ePHI.
The downloadable SRA Tool is a desktop application that walks users through multiple choice questions to help identify and assess potential risks and vulnerabilities to ePHI. References and best practices to strengthen an organization’s cybersecurity posture are provided while using the tool.
This latest version of the SRA Tool includes enhancements and improvements based on current cybersecurity guidance and user feedback from previous versions, including:
- New and enhanced guidance and instructions within the SRA Tool
- NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0 references (replacing NIST CSF 1.1)
- Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) Cybersecurity Performance Goal (CPG) references
- New content on mitigating organizational threats and vulnerabilities
- New content on cybersecurity supply chain risks
- Bug fixes and content improvements