The numbers tell a scary story. When polled by Ponemon, 44% of organizations say they’ve experienced a third-party data breach in the last year. In addition, 65% of respondents have not identified the third parties with access to their most sensitive data and 51% stated that their organizations are not assessing the security and privacy practices of the third parties that are granted access to their systems.

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?

With the average healthcare organization going through over 2.5 million EMR accesses a day, it can be difficult for an organization to ensure those accesses are safe, all important data is secure, and that industry-specific compliance is reached.

If you’re an average size healthcare organization, the amount of EMR access happening in your network, per day, can top 2.5 million. That can be hard to fathom at first, but it makes sense.

As Big Tech is under attack from Congress and the public about how they handle and monetize customer private data, some companies have chosen to pivot. Instead of collecting and profiting off of consumer data, their focus is on protecting privacy. 

The Colonial Pipeline hack, in the end, came down to poor access management. The hackers found their way into operational technology (OT) through a VPN password that had never been de-provisioned. A small error that cost millions.

At the end of last year, we said that in 2021 ransomware would be here to stay, and the big trends will be third-party attacks and cyber terrorism. While no one likes to say “I told you, so,” especially when it comes to cybersecurity, the past 12 months saw headline after headline about ransomware attacks, third-party hacks, breaches of valuable data (like EMRs),