Feisal Nanji, CEO and Executive Director at Techumen LLC, will present a two-part webinar series. View the first webinar, Why are Security & Governance for Health Data Analytics Vital?, from October 6 and register for the second webinar, Securing Your Data Analytics Program, on December 15th at 12 pm ET. In anticipation of this webinar, Feisal answered many commonly asked questions on our blog:

The more data we collect, the more concerned we should be about what data is appropriate and how it should be analyzed.   What are the ethical, privacy, and legal issues to consider?

Clearly large data sets exchanged with increasing velocity present technical and administrative challenges. The key is to design a “Data Governing Body” with a direct mandate from the CEO to manage the data analytics program properly.  This will help stave off concerns around HIPAA, GDPR and other compliance requirements which reflect the need for proper management of ethical, privacy and legal issues.

In your opinion are organizations prepared for cyberattacks as we gather so much data?

Data breaches and cyber-attacks affect the businesses, but they also affect us, as consumers and customers.  If any ePHI is exposed, we are at high risk for fraudulent activities, fines etc. In my opinion, many organizations are not fully prepared. Some lack the right analytics-based approach, a strategy, process, technologies, and skillset to deter and prevent cyber security.

Many companies are still reliant on fundamentally insecure networks and technologies, and there is a need to adopt smarter defensive strategies.

What are the security gaps in current approaches?

Gaps include inadequate security funding, improper or misinformed security spending, poor governance, and a lack of training for people manipulating large data sets.

Should we be looking at a new role in the organization such as a Chief Data Officer?

Yes!!! We need data consolidation and analysis s to provide insight

Which is why I focus on good data security and governance, especially when developing a borderless data environment. Clear and enforced data governance policies and procedures, as well as strong data security, are paramount.

The Chief Data Officer helps overcome cultural and territorial boundaries and puts policies and procedures in place that ensure that the organizational data, no matter the system it resides in, is  of high quality and provides a “single version of the truth” to anyone who accesses it.

Is Data security a question of managing risk?

As we all know proprietary data is often scattered throughout the organization and this increases the chance that some or all of it will wind up in the wrong hands. The only way you can avoid this problem is to implement in-depth defensive strategies to protect an organization’s most valuable, sensitive data.  This involves asking some honest questions about access levels and the value of your data.  Once you have asked yourselves some fundamental questions you can begin to assess your security condition and implement an enterprise security strategy and architecture.

It is vital to understand the value of your information and appropriately distribute that information to the people who need it to make decisions but without letting it fall into the hands of people who don’t.   Data security and compliance—will be critical in your ability to make data analytics widespread across the organization.

Feisal Nanji, is the CEO and Executive Director at Techumen LLC, a company that focuses exclusively on securing health information by simplifying health care security for their health care clients. A seasoned C-Level Technology Risk expert with over 25 years of experience in developing and executing large information security and product development programs. Feisal brings deep knowledge of regulatory frameworks, technology capabilities and process constraints to consistently deliver quality information risk management programs for large health care institutions.

Be sure to view or sign up for Feisal’s webinars Why are Security & Governance for Health Data Analytics Vital? and Securing Your Data Analytics Program. Check out our other data analytics webinars and blogs here as well as our on-demand webinars in our shopping cart as part of our online compliance training courses and get ready for our Virtual HIPAA Privacy and Security Summit 2020 on November 12.  A great opportunity to learn with available CEUs and CLEs!