GRC and Continuous Compliance for Healthcare
The best GRC platform for a healthcare organization under HIPAA tests each safeguard continuously instead of once a year, from live data where the tools are connected and through AI JedAI review where the safeguard is a document, and checks each vendor that handles patient data the same way. DigitalXForce maps each control once to HIPAA, HITRUST and the NIST Privacy Framework, and for the Gulf region to the Abu Dhabi Healthcare Information and Cybersecurity Standard (ADHICS), and tests each control continuously against live evidence from the tools you connect. The frameworks page lists every framework DigitalXForce maps.
Testing each control continuously against live evidence is Continuous Control Assurance (CCA), which uses evidence, monitoring and validation to determine whether controls continue to operate as expected.
You can read more about vendor evidence verification, SOC 2 and ISO 27001 evidence collection and how to choose third-party risk management software.
Why point-in-time evidence fails in healthcare
HIPAA applies to covered entities and to the business associates that handle ePHI for them, so a hospital’s compliance depends on its vendors’ controls as well as its own. The AI-Powered Third-Party Risk Management module scores each business associate from questionnaire answers, evidence and external signals.
How one tested control reports to every framework
DigitalXForce tests each control once in the AI-Powered Risk Management and Automated GRC module, with C-Assess for compliance, X-Assess for security and A-Assess for audit, and reports the result to every framework the control belongs to.
Who this page is for
This page is for the security, compliance and risk teams at hospitals, health systems and other covered entities, and at the business associates that handle ePHI for them. DigitalXForce serves mid-size and large organizations. Both sides of that relationship face the same question in an audit, which is whether each safeguard still works and whether the evidence shows it.
One safeguard, from test to retest
Take one safeguard as an example: multifactor authentication on every system that holds ePHI. DigitalXForce tests that control at its own frequency, set by how fast its evidence can change, and stores every result with the evidence it read and a timestamp. The compliance dashboards show the age of that evidence, so the compliance team can see which safeguards were checked today.
When the test fails, the result reaches the compliance view and the risk register at the same time. X-ROC, the XForce Risk Operations Center, takes the failure in as an alert with its evidence attached, ranks it by quantified business impact and escalates it to the control owner. If the organization wants it, the remediation ticket goes to ServiceNow or Jira.
The control is tested again when the fix is marked done, and the finding closes only when the retest passes. The same result then counts for HIPAA, HITRUST and the NIST Privacy Framework, since the control is mapped once to each. This walk-through is a representative example of how the platform handles one safeguard.
Who does what
- The control owner fixes the failed safeguard and marks the fix done, and DigitalXForce runs the retest.
- An analyst reviews the conclusions of AI JedAI and the drafts of XForce GPT before anyone relies on them, and every conclusion links back to the evidence it used.
- The compliance team reads test results and evidence age on the dashboards and prepares for the audit from the stored record.
- Auditors use the DigitalXForce platform to review the evidence. DigitalXForce makes clients ready for their audits and does not perform internal audits itself.
A business associate, from intake to offboarding
A business associate enters through a configurable intake form, and the platform classifies its inherent risk automatically. A person confirms that classification and approves the tier, and the reasoning is recorded. DigitalXForce uses three tiers: Tier 1 Critical, Tier 2 High and Tier 3 Commodity.
A business associate placed in Tier 1 Critical gets External Risk View, AI review of its SOC 2 and ISO reports and connector evidence from its own systems, monitored continuously. Tier 2 is refreshed weekly and Tier 3 monthly, with triggered alerts in between. External Risk View needs no agent, no questionnaire and no cooperation from the supplier, and it maps fourth-party and nth-party dependencies.
When a business associate reports a breach, AI JedAI maps it to the services and data that depend on that supplier. Recertification looks at what changed in the evidence since the last review. Offboarding tracks data return and access revocation through to a closure record.
What DigitalXForce reads, and where it runs
DigitalXForce connectors read configuration and compliance signals only. They never read business records or customer data, which in a hospital includes patient records.
The full DigitalXForce platform runs in the client’s own hosting, so the client keeps full control of its data, which is the model DigitalXForce prefers. DigitalXForce Lite is the full DigitalXForce platform hosted in the cloud, with the same functionality, for any organization that prefers cloud hosting.
How to check it on your own safeguards
DigitalXForce lets a prospective client run a cloud deployment and see the platform work firsthand before buying. In the 4-week proof of value, the first assessments run in week 3 and are reviewed with your team in week 4.
Further reading
Two articles go deeper: healthcare data security in a multi-cloud environment and the lessons from the Center for Vein Restoration data breach.
See DigitalXForce on your HIPAA and HITRUST controls. Request a demo.
