Using outside vendors can be a godsend for many organizations. These third parties provide the ability to scale a business, bring new and vital expertise to bear on problems, and let you concentrate on core competencies.

It’s no news to healthcare-related organizations that if they handle personal health information (PHI) or electronic personal health information (ePHI), they are required to maintain HIPAA/HITECH compliance. These regulations are stringent, and staying compliant can be difficult.

In these strange times of Covid-19, companies face increased and expanded cybersecurity threats. Enterprise security perimeters expanded exponentially almost overnight as both employees and vendor reps work from their homes.

When the event hit the news that the medical debt collector American Medical Collection Agency (AMCA) suffered a massive data breach last year, businesses from various industries were shaken.

The manufacturing industry, like so many others, is undergoing massive change. With the introduction of technologies like 3D printing, Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), companies have been able to disrupt the industry extremely quickly with creative ways to manufacture products. However, these new tools, increasingly connected to global networks, have created heightened vulnerabilities to cyberattacks.

Third-party risk management, or TPRM, is becoming a big deal in IT and Information security circles. This is because a large number of breaches and hacks are being connected to insecure or mismanaged third parties such as vendors, supply chain partners, and cloud companies providing infrastructure or software applications.

Every healthcare organization knows about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). It’s part of daily life for those working in a healthcare setting, and it can be — from a cybersecurity perspective — a difficult set of regulations to navigate.

With a single healthcare system averaging 2.5 million EMR accesses a day, it’s safe to say that access control can be an overwhelming task for an organization to manage.

The digital world today is all about access. Third parties are accessing software programs, systems, and assets remotely. Employees are accessing servers and data from coffee shops, vacation homes, and even on the road. But more access inherently means more risk.

If there’s a phrase as buzzy as Zero Trust these days, it’s least privileged access. The two sound similar in both name and concept. If you’re employing zero trust aren’t you, by default, also only granting least privileged access?