Portal Security & Penetration Testing

Medical billing portals typically have to comply with HIPAA regulations due to storing data classified as PHI (Protected Health Information). As a result, it's of major importance to continuously safeguard and validate the security of the system. A way to accomplish this is by penetration testing and what's commonly referred to as white hat hacking, which attempts to uncover and then resolve any potential security issues before they are maliciously exploited.

The purpose of doing ongoing testing and auditing is not just for adherence to HIPAA requirements. It’s also performed to manage the actual security of the application, as highly sensitive data is stored within HIPAA-compliant medical billing software. It's critical for the business that all customer data is secure and constantly under “white hat attacks”. This enables any new technologies, new weaknesses in existing technologies, or possible flaws is the system to be found by the friendly team first. That way, white hats will have an opportunity to correct any issues and prevent black hat hackers from exploiting the data out in the market.

In order to complete an ongoing software audit and penetration testing, it's optimal for the team to plan a comprehensive security auditing process for continuous execution. That process should ideally include complete application penetration testing. Namely, running standardized sets of tests against both the infrastructure and the application which validates certain ports are closed; including confirmation that the different protocols for transmitting data (over SSL or other formats) are meeting the latest industry standards and best practices.

The ultimate goal is to render the system less vulnerable or non-exploitable altogether. For effective results, these standardized tests should be run periodically (daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on the circumstances) and their results will guide adjustments and modifications to be implemented.

Proactive Measures and Security Layers

Another highly recommended action is to proactively make updates to the system’s security and infrastructure, like securing the actual data when it's sitting at rest. This involves assurance that information is distributed across multiple different layers while the minimum required data is being shared at each layer.

When the information is effectively viewed by the user, it's literally only shown from a single endpoint. The user interface itself only has access to the data in a very minimized format that is only specifically available to that authenticated user. Essentially, scope is limited to the extent that each authenticated user only gets access to data they’re authorized by their username and password to see.

Going up the chain, it’s meaningful to consider that the information isn’t saved anywhere in the user interface. It's neither cached nor stored in the user interface and the application itself is not saving sensitive data. What the application would potentially save is a key value that would practically leverage tokenization. You can read more about this in our other articles on medical billing portals.

The tokenization would consistently provide validation that a user was authenticated, without tying any PHI data to that user. Then that token would go back to the API which would essentially be in another layer, potentially behind a physical firewall. Those APIs are only accessible via a call from the application, which is inside the physical server as opposed to a user's browser. The application server can be whitelisted, which prevents someone outside of that whitelist from accessing the API data. The big idea is that multiple layers are present in the system and they collectively provide redundancy.

The actual application data that's hosting the PHI via HIPAA-compliant web hosting might be behind a separate physical firewall, which keeps data and the application itself encrypted at rest. When data is transferred, everything is sent securely over SSL. This set of multiple layers ensures nobody can get information unless they're properly authenticated and authorized. That constitutes a profoundly robust set of randomized strings that pose a great challenge to replication attempts. Penetration testing is meant to complete a running stream of validation that none of those different layers can be penetrated or exploited easily (and ideally, not exploited at all).

The infrastructure is set up with the intent to minimize exposure through every step of the process. Ultimately, if the above procedures are ongoing and continuously performed, then we can remain assured that we're -at minimum- following industry best practices. In other words, we're effectively removing or significantly reducing the risk of any security breach that could threaten the application.

• Medical Billing Portal Overview
• Medical Billing HIPAA Compliance & Regulations
• Meet PHI Data Regulations with Data Tokenization
• HIPAA-Compliant Billing Software
• Portal Security and Penetration Testing Best Practices
• HIPAA-Compliant Database Software
• Sensitive Information Access Levels & Protection
• Administrative Security Measures Best Practices
• HIPAA-Compliant Web Hosting
• Secure Email Communication and Data Privacy
• Including Patient Insurance Providers and Physicians
• Integration Options for Medical Billing Portals