The top priority for most IT teams these days, for good reason, is information security. Yes, speed, convenience, and accessibility of data are important, but security is critical and it’s coming under threat from every angle.
Here are three reasons your information security plan won’t be complete until you have a healthcare-specific data catalog in place.
- You can’t secure your healthcare data if you don’t know what you have.
Think of it this way: You can put a lock on your garden shed, but if you don’t know what’s in there, you might not even notice if the lock has been picked and the leaf blower’s gone. Likewise, if you don’t have a clear view of your data assets, you might not even know where your vulnerabilities are.
A data catalog like Compendium compiles all your data sources into one view—so you can instantly see what you have, where it is, how it’s classified (e.g. PHI), when it was created, when it was last accessed, and who owns it.
2. There’s too much data for one Information Security team to cover on their own. You need help from data stewards.
Building on the point above, a critical feature of a healthcare data catalog is that it identifies who owns each source of content within your organization. If someone creates a report, they are noted as the owner of that report within the data catalog. If there’s a question about the accuracy of the content, you’ll know who to go to. If there’s a need to control access to that report, you’ll have an owner who can manage that. If there’s a potential breach of security, you’ll have a person who can help answer questions.
Without a data catalog in place, people can create content, save it, and forget it—and no one will be monitoring its security from that moment on.
3. A black box of data is a risky target.
The bottom line is that information transparency within your organization increases information security beyond your doors. If your data is behind a firewall, that’s obviously better than no security at all. But if you don’t know what you have, are your data assets really as safe and secure as they should be?
The good news is a data catalog is one of the least costly and most efficient pieces of the information security puzzle. The important thing is to choose a data catalog that’s designed specifically for the unique security needs of the healthcare industry. Compendium is the only solution of its kind—and it’s also the easiest to implement. In fact, a subscription to Compendium includes unlimited support from their team of data governance experts, so you’ll have it up and running faster than any other solution.
Within just six weeks of installing Compendium, you’ll start to have a much more clear view into your organization’s reports, documents, databases, dashboards, and healthcare data—and your security program will already be much stronger.
Ready to increase the security of your healthcare information? Check out Compendium, the data catalog for healthcare that delivers maximum results with minimal effort.
