Organizations need to address several challenges related to enforcing strong password policies. Key solution requirements include:

• Strengthen password protection of applications to support compliance
• Reduce burden on help-desk staff managing password problems
• Streamline the login/logout process to minimize time spent on this activity by staff
• Ensure periodic password changes across the organization

As your organization prepares to design a SSO solution, the following are important factors to consider:

• Target Audience
• Application Types
• Application Access and Privilege
• Deployment Mode
• Account Management

MANAGED COMPLIANCE SERVICES PROGRAM (MCSP) FROM ECFIRST

Legislation mandates require organizations to maintain reasonable and appropriate safeguards in several specific areas. Compliance requirements dictate critical activities that must be conducted on a regular schedule, typically once a year. On a regular schedule, organizations must:

• Assess compliance with the requirements  of confidentiality and privacy related regulations
• Assign responsibility to the security officer who is responsible for coordinating compliance and security initiatives
• Conduct a comprehensive and thorough risk analysis including vulnerability assessment (penetration testing)
• Complete a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) for contingency planning and disaster recovery
• Develop, review, and update security policies and procedures
• Train all members of the workforce (initial and ongoing)
• Audit and evaluate the information infrastructure

The ecfirst Managed Compliance Services Program is tailored to meet your compliance requirements.Key features of the ecfirst Managed Compliance Services Program are:

• Bundled outsourced solution for a fixed monthly fee
• Periodic performance of vulnerability assessments, security risk analysis, BIA and contingency planning
• Training, certification and periodic audit and evaluation to keep your organization fully compliant at all times
• Keeping you compliant with the regulations, to help you focus on the business of delivering exceptional services and capabilities to your clients

Benefits of outsourcing compliance and security include:

• Minimizing productivity losses from unexpected downtime
• Enabling staff to better focus on business-critical tasks and complying with key regulations
• Depth in resource capabilities with trusted knowledge of client infrastructure
• Smooth out volatility in resource demands and costs associated with managing information technology

For more information visit www.aha-solutions.org, contact Lorna Waggoner at 1.877.899.9974 x17 or visitwww.HIPAAAcademy.net

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HIPAA Tip

2-DAY ON-SITE SINGLE SIGN-ON (SSO) WORKSHOP

ecfirst, an Inc. 500 business with over 1400 clients, delivers expert solutions in the areas of SSO, identity management and context management. The ecfirst solution is focused on working collaboratively with your organization to conduct a rapid assessment and planning workshop to establish critical requirements. This provides the foundation to identify appropriate vendor and product solution options for the implementation of an SSO system. Additionally, ecfirst can provide complete project management services including RFP creation, arranging for product demonstrations, on-site evaluation, deployment, implementation and training to meet your specific application and system requirements.

Our solution is based on an initial 2-day On-Site SSO Assessment Workshop to review your business and technology requirements and establish core parameters for an enterprise SSO initiative. The ecfirst team consists of credentialed professionals with years of experience designing and successfully implementing SSO and identity management solutions.

For a customized proposal or to schedule a 2-day SSO workshop at your site to establish requirements, document your current state and desired SSO end-state, please contact Lorna Waggoner, Director of Business Development at 877.899.9974 x17 or at Lorna.Waggoner@ecfirst.com. We spend no more than 2 days on-site and then develop a comprehensive report including; enterprise SSO requirements, a sample RFP for your use, and critical next steps.