With cyber threats reaching unprecedented levels, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has proposed enhanced security standards under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) “Security Rule.” These updates are designed to strengthen the protection of electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI), positioning cybersecurity as a critical safeguard for today’s healthcare environments.
Central to these updates is the requirement for network segmentation—a requirement and a critical safeguard to prevent cyber threats, contain breaches, and enforce compliance across healthcare IT environments. To achieve this effectively, however, requires more than traditional methods.
Enter Graphiant. Our Data Assurance platform delivers a next-generation approach to network security, exceeding HIPAA’s updated requirements by supporting a Continuous Adaptive Trust model. This allows healthcare organizations to align with compliance frameworks and unlock unmatched security, visibility, and automation in their cyber defense strategies.
HIPAA’s New Network Segmentation Requirements
The updated HIPAA Security Rule strengthens network segmentation as a pivotal strategy for healthcare organizations to safeguard sensitive health data. Network segmentation isn’t optional anymore—it’s the backbone of a robust cybersecurity posture, designed to prevent breaches before they happen, and to ensure ePHI remains protected as it moves across networks.
The updated Security Rule emphasizes key segmentation practices that healthcare organizations and their business associates must adopt to protect ePHI. These include:
- Ensure Full Visibility into Data Flows: Understanding how and where data moves across your network is essential. Without this clarity, ensuring compliance or detecting threats becomes nearly impossible.
- Implement Real-Time Monitoring: Proactively detect and address unusual activity before it becomes a breach. These insights allow for preemptive responses, rather than reactive damage control.
- Preventing Lateral Movement of Cyber Threats: Network segmentation constrains potential attack paths, preventing threats from spreading across systems and containing risks before they spread.
- Strengthen Compliance: A segmented network supports adherence to HIPAA’s updated requirements and other alignment frameworks, reducing risk exposure while demonstrating accountability to regulators.
The rule mandates that healthcare organizations and business associates implement granular access controls and risk-based segmentation to reduce attack surfaces and minimize vulnerabilities by effectively isolating critical systems. These measures are critical in today’s hybrid IT environments that span cloud, on-premises, and edge processes.
Here’s where Graphiant’s Data Assurance solution steps in to lead the charge
Graphiant goes beyond merely ticking the compliance box. It redefines what’s achievable in network segmentation with an end-to-end approach that meets HIPAA’s requirements and sets a new standard for proactive security. Graphiant empowers healthcare organizations to mitigate risk, assure compliance, and stay resilient in the evolving cybersecurity landscape by leveraging advanced policy enforcement, encryption, and network control mechanisms.
By addressing every aspect of the proposed segmentation mandates—from visibility and monitoring to control and automation—Graphiant ensures that healthcare networks are not just segmented, but strategically fortified to adapt to future demands. It’s network segmentation at its most impactful—purpose-built, compliant, and trusted.
Comprehensive Visibility: A 360° View of Your Network Security
One of HIPAA’s most significant challenges is insufficient visibility into ePHI movement. Without the ability to track and analyze where sensitive data is flowing, healthcare organizations are left vulnerable to breaches and compliance violations. This is where Graphiant makes a difference.
Graphiant ensures you always have full visibility over your data’s path with the following capabilities:
- End-to-End Path Visibility: Gain a precise, real-time view of how ePHI moves across your network, ensuring it never crosses high-risk or non-compliant regions.
- Behavioral Data Mapping: Categorize data based on its compliance posture, security level, and movement patterns, enabling instant recognition of unauthorized flows.
- Network-Wide Segmentation Analysis: Prevent unauthorized lateral movement by using advanced segmentation to ensure workloads remain isolated and protected, especially within hybrid cloud environments.
Graphiant empowers healthcare leaders to enforce strict data assurance measures without compromising operational efficiency by delivering unmatched transparency into your network operations.
Real-Time Monitoring: Detect and Respond to Threats Quickly
Static defenses are no longer enough to protect against the surge of sophisticated healthcare-related cyberattacks. Many breaches go undetected for months due to a lack of continuous monitoring, leaving organizations exposed. HIPAA’s proposed Security Rule requires organizations to prioritize real-time monitoring as the new standard.
Graphiant’s cutting-edge monitoring capabilities are tailored to meet these demands and provide healthcare organizations with an unparalleled level of proactive protection:
- Identify Suspicious Data Movement: Detect and block unauthorized activity before a breach occurs.
- Automate Response Actions: Trigger automated policies to deter risks, such as restricting access when ePHI is accessed from unapproved locations.
- AI-Powered Anomaly Detection: Detect abnormal patterns in data behavior and prioritize alerts to help security teams focus on critical risks instead of noise.
These features allow healthcare organizations to stay ahead of cyber threats by moving from a reactive approach to an offensive, proactive posture.
Advanced Compliance Reporting
Manual audits are inefficient and costly, often requiring significant time and resources to ensure compliance. HIPAA’s updated rule addresses this by demanding robust, automated reporting systems to maintain oversight and support regulatory reviews.
Graphiant provides the automation and precision necessary to tackle these challenges, creating an effortless compliance process:
- Regulatory Alignment Reports: Quickly generate reports to demonstrate alignment with HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, and other regulatory standards.
- Network Risk & Compliance Dashboards: Access real-time data insights to evaluate risk exposure and compliance status, ensuring quick adjustments when needed.
- Customizable Reporting & Dat Flow: Monitor ePHI data flows, tracking access across users, locations, and timestamps for complete transparency during audits.
Graphiant’s tools don’t just meet HIPAA’s compliance needs—they exceed them, providing a future-proof framework that evolves alongside changing regulatory requirements.
Future-Proofing Healthcare Cybersecurity
With cyberattacks on healthcare cybersecurity rising dramatically, compliance with HIPAA’s updated security requirements is a necessity, but the real challenge lies in building an infrastructure that can withstand the complexities of tomorrow’s threats.
Graphiant’s Data Assurance platform offers the solution. By combining state-of-the-art encryption, visibility, segmentation, and compliance tools, Graphiant ensures your network is secure and future-ready.
With Graphiant, hospitals, clinics, and business associates can move forward confidently, knowing that their ePHI is being safeguarded by a next-generation solution designed for the unique demands of healthcare IT.
