Beth Israel improves security and HIPAA compliance with Accellion Secure File Transfer
Ranked by US News & World Report as one of the nation’s top hospitals, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) is renowned for excellence in patient care, biomedical research, teaching and community service.
Background
Ranked by US News & World Report as one of the nation’s top hospitals, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) is renowned for excellence in patient care, biomedical research, teaching and community service. Among independent teaching hospitals, BIDMC is the fourth-largest recipient of biomedical research funding from the National Institutes of Health. To maintain its world-leading status – and funding – BIDMC relies heavily on their email system to quickly share information among staffers and outside researchers.
Challenges
Faced with growing evidence of a rising trend among users to send more and more data off the network through unsecured or third party services outside of the IT department’s control, BIDMC’s CIO Dr. John D. Halamka was quick to realize the significant HIPAA risk potential this presented if data confidentiality is compromised. However, as BIDMC tightened email policies and practices, they realized they were pushing users to less secure solutions as “work-arounds”.