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Is Win2k + SP3 HIPAA Compliant?
Chris asks: "Our company deals with medical records in a peripheral sort of way (as they pertain to student loans), and due to new laws we are required to be HIPAA
compliant by April. After reading the discussion on here about the new EULA for Win2k SP3, I had a disturbing thought. As far as I can tell, if you use Windows 2000 then you're going to be out of compliance whatever you do. If you install the patch, then theoretically Microsoft could access those medical records (possibly by accident) without 'due cause or need' in the process of updating your machine. If you don't patch your system then you'll fail the security requirements of the law." If Win2k with SP3 is not HIPAA compliant (and I stress the if because no one has made a statement either way, yet) what can non-compliant Medical IT departments do?
Besides, would you really want to take legal advice from a group of people who are known to mistake duct tape and baling wire for building materials?
The problem is not the service pack or the auto-downloader, which can be disabled. The problem is with the EULA itself, where Microsoft reserves for itself the right to access your system at any time. Installing the service pack off-line still requires acceptance of the EULA.
sPh
Well, for starters, Solaris boxes are rather expensive, the person asking the question may not be able to authorize that kind of purchase even if he wanted to. I believe he was looking for either a software fix, or a cheaper hardware one that would still allow him to use his current setup. I'd suggest a fire wall, and disabling the autoinstallers.
Xaotik Designs
HIPAA is like any other oversight group and only it can decide this is "okay" or a "violation". However, since logic cannot be guaranteed to rule, you cannot guess which. Have your company, preferably through your legal consul, submit a binding request for clarification.
Be certain your lawyer understands he should ask for an exemption until this is clarified. (This will prevent them from sitting on it for two years and then you getting in trouble later.)
Later when HIPAA says it is okay to do "X" and you find MS (or anyone with such an EULA) has absorbed records, your company is in the clear. Do not presume you can later claim a technical solution that was "just as good as..."
This is an issue for your lawyer(s) to resolve, not Slashdot.
Really. It'll clarify things right up. Dollars to donuts there's a clause in there, probably called "Severability" or something to that effect, which states that "if any clause in this EULA is found to be in violation of the law, then it is null and void with all the other clauses still in effect."
Contracts aren't allowed to violate the law. A contract to kill someone isn't legally binding, because murder is illegal. If Microsoft wants to claim they get remote access at will to your boxes, then you get to say "neener neener neener, no you don't, under HIPAA I'm forbidden from allowing you that access".
The proper Microsoft response? "Oh. Well, we're sorry about that. All the other clauses of the EULA stick, though."
So go ahead, get Windows SP3, and then figure out some way to disable remote-root.
Oh, and one more thing--
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, TALK TO LEGAL COUNSEL. WHY THE FSCK ARE YOU ASKING LEGAL QUESTIONS ON `ASK SLASHDOT', ANYWAY?! DO WE LOOK LIKE HARVARD LAW GRADS?!
(Sorry, just had to get that knee-jerk reaction out of my system.)
"Nobody ever got sacked for buying IBM"
If you're just worrying about covering your behind, extent to "Nobody ever got sacked for buying Microsoft" and then to "Nobody ever got sacked for clicking through default Microsoft licenses."
I actually think that people should get sacked for doing this if they compromise their business for the sake of avoiding raising a thorny issue, but it's not going to happen in our lifetime.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
As long as you're being anal-retentive, you should be aware that unencrypted instant-messaging protocols are frowned upon, because medical staff can circumvent all your hard work and simply send patient data back & forth over the IM.
Having said that, if either of these two represents your biggest problems, then you're probably safe for a while. I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish by asking Slashdot - maybe you should try checking with your MS rep first to at least get the company line. MS is wild about HIPAA - they produce a lot of BizTalk stuff for hospital EDI needs.
What's your damage, Heather?
... if your own operating system is tunnelling through http to make requests from Microsoft's server to download patches without your knowledge?
(Unless, of course, you want to cut off MS's websites from your browsers as well.)
Note that disabling auto-updating is a technical solution that assumes that MS won't ignore that setting for any updates that it consideres to be "really critical", either to your security, or to MS's business needs.
Ah, but they are preventing users of pirated activation codes and Warez copies of XP from accessing the Windows Update site aren't they? Wouldn't that also preclude gaining access to the DRM "upgrade"?
All of a sudden that Windows XP .ISO and keygen I spotted on P2P seems a lot more appealing... ;)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Yeah, that'll go over real good.
Elitist IT Moron: We have decided that Microsoft products are no good, and we're going to switch all of our operations to Linux-based solutions.
Docs: Well, OK, just as long as we can still get our work done. Will we still be able to send our grant applications and other records to the various governmental agencies, other hospitals, and such without and problems?
Elitist IT Moron: Well you'll be using this open source word processing program that is designed to be compatible with Word, but there is a chance that some places won't be able to view it properly, or it will look slightly different. Medical companies aren't sticklers for complete and total accuracy, are they?
Docs: What about these hundreds of legacy DOS and Windows applications that do one thing for us, but do it incredibly well, that we absolutely have to have? Will they still run?
Elitist IT Moron: Umm...No. But there may be 0.85 pre-beta versions of comperable apps up at SourceForge we could try! Or we could maybe try Wine and see if we can get a few of them to work.
Docs: So basically you're telling us that by switching to Linux, we won't be able to properly communicate with the people we need to, and we won't be able to use the applications we need to.
Elitist IT Moron: Uhh....W1nd0ze suxxor?
I agree with what you are saying, but I feel that these questions need to be asked. Well, they shouldn't need to be asked, because MS shouldn't be doing what they are doing, but I digress.
I work for a very large company and we are implementing HIPAA into our software now. We do all kinds of software for hospitals. The reason I think that this issue needs to be brought up is because most people don't even think about the holes that MS creates. I asked a very similar question to our director of operations a while ago, and he said basically that if the hospitals don't have firewalls, then they have bigger problems. While this may be true, I still think it is good to ask the question, so that people are aware of the "Microsoft issue". The people who maintain the firewall need to know about the autoupdate, so that they can block it at the firewall. They need to know about these vulnerabilitites, so they can plug them. I don't trust that they will be keeping up on these things. After all, who would have thought that the OS you run could create a huge gaping hole in your security and potentially hold you liable for violating federal regulations?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
It seems to me that unacceptable changes to the EULA for a service pack might void the implied warranty usability of Windows 2000. By releasing the service pack, they are admitting that Windows 2000 has problems. If I cannot get access to fixes for those problems without agreeing to a contract substantially different from that which governed my license for Windows 2000, I think that I might have a good basis for a lawsuit to get a court order that Microsoft supply fixes to their software under the terms of the original EULA.
I do write lots of stuff that we use, and it's not written to be Win32 only, however, I can't write everything we use. Beyond HIPPA, you have FDA regulations and other rules to comply with as well, and when you can buy something from a vendor that other people (say, the National Institute of Health) are using fine and is compliant, or spend months developing your own custom solution, you're going to choose the one that is working and has support and is tested. If we had the time to write everything exactly how we wanted, we would, but we really don't have the time, or the money typically, to do that.
I'd say that you have a lot to learn about Slashdot. While most of the stories on here are technical in nature or have something to do with technology a large percentage of them have to do with the legal and political issues surrounding something technical.
Think about all the stories on copy protection for CD's. Yes, it has to do with a technical issue, but the discussions are certainly not technical. I've seen no code posted no how to defeat the copy protection. 99% of the posts are opinions about whether it is right for the producers to restrict use of purchased CD's in the way they want to, and the other 1% are First Post!
Why don't you just come out and say it? You are a Microsoft appologist that wants to ignore the issue with their EULA by making fun of the issue and calling it a waste of time. You say it's an invalid clause, but you don't indicate that you are a lawyer (and even if you were I doubt you'd be offering official legal advise). So you want us to just ignore the issue and "agree" to the EULA?
What happens if the EULA is allowed to stand and then Microsoft actually builds in more of this access that you granted them? What happens when it eventually gets installed on all Windows systems and then the crackers find out how to manipulate it and steal information off your computer? Then it wouldn't be Microsoft accessing the sensitive information, as I doubt they actually would do something like that, but because of the EULA they provide additional access methods for others.
There are plenty of valid discussion items surrounding this issue. Ignoring them is not going to make them go away, and they definately fall right smack into the favorite topic on Slashdot -- Microsoft bashing.
Every time I ask Google about this it seems like I end up bouncing back and forth between the same three or four sites never quite finding what I'm after -- kinda like pr0n, but not as fun. So here goes...
Does anyone know of any free/nonfree resources, documents or URLs that list the networking, server and policy encryption and configuration standards required for HIPAA compliance? Consider this from the point of view of a network administrator for a small health services company that buys all of its software from outside vendors (no internal development).
Please don't answer http://hhs.gov. I know about those, and I'm hoping to find a summary or sorts, not the original regs. I'm also aware that the rules themselves are vague and unspecific, and may or may not specifically mention networking and servers hardware software and practices, so I'd appreciate that someone confirm that if it is the case.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Breaking confidentiality via the actions of authorized staff is a different risk. The question is about the act of assigning external parties privileges that itself breaks confidentiality agreements.
As an R.N. in a major hospital I have been told, both by the practice council and the state regulatory board that violation of a clients medical data by other not on the patients heatlh care team (e.g. M.D., R.N. PharmD., O.T., P.T. etc....) is a violation of Federal patient privacy laws and confidentiality guidelines. So the rub as I see it is this, An IT department makes best efforts to secure the data environment, applies all pertinant patches related to know security issue. And it gets hacked. I can't see how the admins can be held responsible given that they have followed all procedures known in order to secure said system. But, to the BEST of my knowledge Microsoft Corporation is not in the Health Care business and the patients, nor the health care team, has not implicitly or explicity consented to making MS party to the patients health care status. So, granted, I can't see MS going into a file system to query up a patient health record. However, by implimenting patch and changes to the system unbeknownst to the admins they are potentially compromising the data, making it less secure or, moreover, making the data inaccessible to the health care team due to the changes MS has implimented causing the system to fail or otherwise crash. This could have potentially drastic outcomes in the event that a patients status and information cannot be accessed at a crucial time (e.g. in a state of crisis - the patient needs emergency surgery and has an allergy to commonly used anesthetics). Who then is responsible for an undesirable outcome that is due to the inablitity to access information crucial to the patients well being? The patient and their families won't really care who's to blame. Their lawyers will simply suponea everyone involved. However, I can see the litigation becoming extremely costly and convoluted in light of such a scenario. And given that the access to said system and the subsequent "updates" and changes applied by MS were directly involved in the patient's negative outcome - how is MS held responsible? Bottom line, IMHO, is that MS is acting like the benevelant father in situations that they have no business in. It is incumbant upon those directly responsible for the maintenence of the system to ensure that it is operating correctly (and in the case of Health Care -- safely). The IT departments are those that should decide what and how changes are implimented -- NOT MICROSOFT! Just MHO!