ClearDATA Adds PHI Automation to Health Care Cloud Platform

ClearDATA, a cloud security provider, has added an automation capability to its ClearDATA Healthcare Security and Compliance Platform.

With the new update, health care organizations and their associates may now use the platform to automatically detect protected health information in multi-cloud storage, ClearDATA said.

Suhas Kelkar, chief product officer at ClearDATA, said the health care industry has been opening itself up to cybersecurity breaches amid its increasing adoption of cloud technologies, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic.

“This new technology offering enhances health care organizations’ ability to create secure environments for data that facilitate innovation, collaboration and scalability,” Kelkar said.

Automation improves the efficiency of storage audits and prevents common pitfalls such as the misidentification of sensitive data, a mistake commonly exploited by hackers, ClearDATA said.

The company pointed to a Department of Health and Human Services report stating that the majority of all security issues in the cloud are caused by misconfiguration.

The ClearDATA Healthcare Security and Compliance Platform was also designed to help users ensure compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and other privacy regulations.

ClearDATA said the new PHI detection capability extends the platform’s scope from the infrastructure layer to the data layer.

The new feature complements a previously implemented capability that allows health care organizations to redact sensitive data for the purpose of using PHI, ClearDATA added.

Users of the ClearDATA platform may enable the automation capability in Amazon Web Services S3, Microsoft Azure Blob and Google Cloud Platform Cloud Storage.