The HIPAA Practice Everyone Neglects: Physical Security  

Category: Security

By: Brandon Barney, CISSP

According to 2012's Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) Office of Civil Rights (OCR) pilot audits, a glaring majority of the healthcare industry is not prepared for an inspection of their Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirement compliance, especially small physicians.

When discussing the HIPAA Security Rule, it is important to note there are three major components: Administrative, Technical, and Physical. While each is important, the physical portion is often glazed over by employees and is currently one of the major reasons for data compromise in the healthcare industry.

Physical security has proven itself a major HIPAA hurdle
In 2013 alone, according to HHS data, more than 4.5 million individuals have been affected by patient data loss or theft. After hundreds of t...