We recently came across an article that explains how Healthcare Leads All Industries in Data Breaches for the first half of 2015. From the article: “(T)he healthcare industry had 34 percent of its total records breached, amounting to 84 million data records compromised, the highest rate of any industry.” This is a significant challenge for healthcare organizations, particularly in the context of their HIPAA regulatory obligations, but an opportunity for partners.

As a trusted adviser, partners should proactively initiate conversations about network security. The healthcare industry, like many others, struggles to meet the evolving information systems and information security requirements and threats. As a “trusted adviser to trusted advisers”, AVANT has an offering of Healthcare enabled cloud providers like Cisco Powered Peak 10 and Cleardata that can help large and small organizations who need to comply with HIPAA.

If you’re looking for Infrastructure as a Service for healthcare make sure your service provider will sign a Business Associate Agreement, discuss the responsibility matrix (RACI), and ensure that you have a data protection strategy that includes encryption and or tokenization.

Security and its role in regulatory compliance is an enormously complex subject, but don’t let that be a barrier to you having these conversations with your customers. The reality is, your customers are having these conversations and if not with you, then likely with one of your competitors. If your company lacks the institutional knowledge to address security in a comprehensive way, you should be able to leverage the resources of your master agent or vendor partners.

Partners looking to learn more about InfoSec and Healthcare can click here.