[February 25, 2014]

Coalfire's HIPAAcentral Targets Critical Health Data Security Challenges

Coalfire^® announced today that HIPAAcentral™, a new compliance exchange and community, is growing rapidly as more than 2,000 business associates and covered entities have joined the network.

HIPAAcentral offers a comprehensive suite of solutions to simplify compliance, security and risk management by providing vendor risk management and self-assessment tools, training, templates, and third-party validation services, as well as a compliance registry and knowledge exchange.

"The personal healthcare information risks to consumers are much worse than other types of data breaches, and there is a lot of fear and uncertainty throughout the industry. This is no longer just about meeting HIPAA compliance mandates. There are significant civil, criminal and financial penalties at the federal, state and local levels, not to mention the potential for reputational harm that could threaten the existence of healthcare organizations of every size," said Andrew Hicks, healthcare practice director at Coalfire. "We have had enormous interest in HIPAAcentral from th moment we offered trial access. Our goal is for HIPAAcentral to become the industry standard and a trusted resource where business associates and covered entities can easily find the resources they need to manage HIPAA compliance and to navigate the complex and rapidly changing regulatory environment," he added.

Since 2012, HIPAA data breaches have increased 138 percent, as reported by covered entities to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and many more data breaches go unreported. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), there are over 500,000 covered entities and business associates.

Coalfire will be demonstrating HIPAAcentral at the 2014 HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition at booth number 5073. Learn more about HIPAAcentral at http://www.hipaacentral.com.

About Coalfire^®

Coalfire is a leading, independent information technology Governance, Risk and Compliance firm that provides IT audit, risk assessment, security and compliance management solutions. Founded in 2001, Coalfire has offices in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Orlando, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington D.C. and Manchester, UK. The firm completes thousands of projects annually in retail, financial services, healthcare, government and utilities. Coalfire's solutions are adapted to requirements under emerging data privacy legislation, the PCI (News - Alert) DSS, GLBA, FFIEC, HIPAA/HITECH, HITRUST, NERC CIP, Sarbanes-Oxley, FISMA and FedRAMP. www.coalfire.com.

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