“The Department of Health and Human Services has had to rethink its business practices to protect critical information transmitted internally and externally with health care providers around the country as it relates to the coronavirus pandemic.”
“HHS CIO Jose Arrieta explained during a webinar this week that enabling data sharing and maintaining data integrity for researchers and those involved in supporting the pandemic response effort remains a top priority. But the nature of cyber attacks has ‘fundamentally changed’ since the pandemic hit.”
“’We’ve seen an increase in cyber activity that’s focused on exploiting a lack of flexibility with identity and access management protocols,’ Arrieta said during Tuesday’s AFCEA Bethesda virtual event. ‘I think that now — instead of just [operational] disruption — there’s a competition for data, there’s a competition for access, there’s a competition for transparency.'”
“To address this increasingly imposed threat, HHS created a flexible identity and access management authentication layer with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies and existing licenses to connect and share data securely with other identity and access management capabilities across the HHS enterprise, Arrieta said.”
“This has given HHS more visibility into who is accessing certain datasets and how the data is being used to safeguard its integrity to the benefit of researchers, Arrieta said…” Read the full article here.
Source: How HHS Has Adapted to Secure and Shared Data for Pandemic Response – By Faith Ryan, June 25, 2020. GovernmentCIO.
