Ever since the development of the HITRUST CSF in 2007, it has been the go-to framework to demonstrate security and compliance for top-tier organizations in healthcare and technology. The benefits of HITRUST certification go beyond basic data security practices as the framework plays a significant role in demonstrating trust with clients and partners.
While HITRUST is considered a strong standard for security—it also facilitates compliance with 50+ authoritative regulations and frameworks. Its comprehensive nature enables one of the highest levels of assurance to the certificate holder in any industry.
Since HITRUST isn't mandatory, it’s valid for security teams to look for tangible certification benefits they can demonstrate to their decision makers. In this guide, we’ll explore 9 practical benefits of HITRUST compliance. We’ll also discuss automation as a resource-efficient way to pursue this CSF without procedural hiccups.
What is the purpose of HITRUST CSF?
The HITRUST CSF is a certifiable framework that aims to align an organization’s risk management, cybersecurity, and compliance processes with industry-accepted regulatory and security standards. It’s widely adopted by organizations looking to improve their security posture, demonstrate it to prospects during security reviews, and shorten deal cycles.
While the framework is applicable to organizations across industries, it’s particularly useful for those that collect or manage protected health information (PHI). For example:
- Healthcare providers
- Insurance companies
- Third parties and contractors in healthcare (faxing companies, shredding businesses, etc.)
HITRUST also enables continuous monitoring and periodic reviews, which helps organizations effortlessly maintain their security posture at any scale.
{{cta_withimage19="/cta-modules"}} | HITRUST Compliance Checklist
9 growth-boosting benefits of the HITRUST CSF
The latest version of the HITRUST CSF (v11.3.0) focuses on making extensive security and compliance programs efficient and cost-effective. Besides offering the general benefits of implementing a robust security framework, it has a few unique advantages most frameworks don’t provide.
In the following sections, we’ll focus on 10 standout benefits of the framework across three categories—this table provides a quick snapshot:
I. Improved market value
HITRUST is recognized and respected in many sectors, which brings about the following benefits:
1. Deeper market access
HITRUST certification directly unlocks new growth opportunities by letting you branch out into industries that expect it. While this is particularly true for the healthcare sector, it also goes for other industries, such as finance and artificial intelligence (AI).
With a HITRUST certificate, you get the advantage of proactively demonstrating the necessary security controls so your deals can move ahead without friction. It also minimizes the need to address repetitive security audits and questionnaires.
2. Gain market differentiators
Standing out in heavily regulated industries often boils down to providing complete security and assurance. Without a clear picture of your security posture, you might lose out on lucrative deals due to the inability to offer the peace of mind stakeholders are looking for.
HITRUST can prevent this because of its status as a globally recognized standard. It paints a transparent picture of a certificate holder’s security posture, which is a considerable marker differentiator in terms of trustworthiness.
3. Value creation
Holding a certificate from a well-known organization like the HITRUST Alliance is an excellent way to increase brand value. It provides assurance for potential investors and shareholders, which can contribute to higher market valuations.
It’s worth noting that security and compliance are rarely seen as direct revenue drivers, which makes related investments hard to justify. With HITRUST, you can create tangible value by continually improving and demonstrating your security posture.
The HITRUST CSF directly improves your security and compliance ROI in several ways, most notably:
- Reduced inefficiencies
- Less resource waste
- New business opportunities driven by a solid security posture
II. Better internal risk management
HITRUST can be a reliable framework to guide your internal risk management processes—the benefits include:
4. Actionable risk mitigation
Most organizations operate in a risk-diverse environment where continuous risk mitigation gets demanding with the increase in the number of vulnerabilities. According to a survey by the Enterprise Strategy Group, 70% of security professionals find it increasingly challenging to manage their security hygiene and posture.
HITRUST certification can resolve these challenges by helping organizations adopt proven, repeatable, and measurable methods to support risk reduction.
HITRUST’s Trust Report showed that only 0.64% of HITRUST-certified environments reported breaches in the last two years. HIITRUST also enables smoother risk mitigation for large and complex security infrastructures with its scalable scoping process that works for various risk profiles and levels.
{{cta_webinar3="/cta-modules"}} | Choosing the right HITRUST certification level and streamlining implementation
5. Better cyber insurance
HITRUST lets you access better cyber insurance plans (that insure you against cyberattacks) with streamlined underwriting, predictable renewals, and discounted preferred rates, which makes the insurance cost-effective.
Additionally, HITRUST CSF is cyber threat adaptive as the framework leverages intelligence models to stay on top of the newest threats. Its one- or two-year certification validity ensures your controls keep up with the necessary updates.
6. Liability reduction
Developing a security program from scratch requires a lot of in-house niche expertise, which is not possible for many organizations. Further, the loopholes in your program can lead to liability situations like non-compliance fines and data loss following a breach.
By adopting HITRUST, you get a prescriptive, complete, and proven cybersecurity framework to build, execute, and validate a security and compliance program without guesswork. Following the framework leads to reduced liability in terms of data breaches, regulatory penalties, and other legal repercussions.
III. Smoother security and compliance programs
HITRUST certification comes with the following additional advantages that help you run smoother security and compliance programs:
7. Commercial compliance (customer-oriented)
Security compliances are more than a nice-to-have—they’re often a deal-breaker when it comes to both B2B and B2C relationships. B2B clients are often extra cautious about their partners’ security postures.
In many cases, specific controls encompassed by the HITRUST CSF will be included as contractual compliance obligations. Some companies even request a HITRUST certificate before considering partnership with an organization. As a result, completing the certification process makes customer-facing compliance significantly easier.
8. Streamlined regulatory compliance
Comprehensive frameworks like HIPAA can be ambiguous and open to interpretation, which makes their implementation challenging. The HITRUST CSF fixes this by concretizing security requirements and controls, making regulatory compliance easier in the process.
By getting HITRUST-certified, you can implement numerous controls that overlap with those of 50+ major authoritative sources, including:
As a result, HITRUST gets you closer to ensuring compliance with your industry’s obligatory regulations and voluntary standards.
{{cta_withimage19="/cta-modules"}} | HITRUST Compliance Checklist
9. Better AI assurance
While AI has revolutionized many industries over the past few years, a lack of proper regulation remains an issue. Organizations that wish to leverage AI technologies are often concerned about the security implications of doing so.
To resolve this problem, HITRUST released the industry’s first AI Assurance Program, which is included in HITRUST CSF versions 11.2 onward.
The program prioritizes AI risk management as a foundational consideration, promoting ethical, effective, and secure AI adoption. Considering the public perception of the volatility in AI products, leveraging the program can promote customer trust.
Role of automation in getting HITRUST CSF certified efficiently
Implementing HITRUST controls can seem like an elaborate process at first, especially if you consider higher assessment levels with numerous in-scope controls and evidence-gathering tasks. If performed manually, a HITRUST assessment can take a long time—and demand excessive monitoring workflows, which makes teams reconsider the resources-used-to-benefits ratio.
That’s why automation solutions like Vanta are essential when pursuing HITRUST. Automation can shorten the time frame and remove inefficiencies from your process. For instance, with the right automation configurations, you can perform a quick gap analysis during your readiness assessment and proactively address any issues.
Additionally, you can organize information about your in-scope security controls and scoring rubrics in a single hub before audits—your HITRUST external assessor can simply use the automation platform to review the evidence and determine the validity of your HITRUST metrics.
Unlock the benefits of HITRUST certification with Vanta
Vanta is a trust management platform that automates up to 80% of the HITRUST certification requirements. As a HITRUST automation partner, Vanta is the fastest way to become HITRUST certified, accelerate deal velocity, and reduce reactive asks.
Vanta offers a HITRUST-vetted security framework that simplifies and expedites the certification process. The platform’s robust HITRUST CSF product is equipped with features that make your workflows resource-efficient—you can expect:
- Automated gap analysis to expedite readiness assessments
- Streamlined evidence collection that leverages over 350 integrations
- Centralized tracking of HITRUST requirements with actionable guidance
- Cross-referencing with other frameworks to reduce duplicative work
- Built-in resources for documentation and testing
- Integration with MyCSF
Check out this free HITRUST webinar for more information.
You can also tap into Vanta’s extensive partner network to find reputable external assessors who can guide you through all MyCSF-related tasks.
Get a demo of the HITRUST CSF product to get a tailored presentation for your business.
{{cta_simple16="/cta-modules"}} | HITRUST product page
Introduction to HITRUST
9 practical benefits of HITRUST certification
Introduction to HITRUST
Ever since the development of the HITRUST CSF in 2007, it has been the go-to framework to demonstrate security and compliance for top-tier organizations in healthcare and technology. The benefits of HITRUST certification go beyond basic data security practices as the framework plays a significant role in demonstrating trust with clients and partners.
While HITRUST is considered a strong standard for security—it also facilitates compliance with 50+ authoritative regulations and frameworks. Its comprehensive nature enables one of the highest levels of assurance to the certificate holder in any industry.
Since HITRUST isn't mandatory, it’s valid for security teams to look for tangible certification benefits they can demonstrate to their decision makers. In this guide, we’ll explore 9 practical benefits of HITRUST compliance. We’ll also discuss automation as a resource-efficient way to pursue this CSF without procedural hiccups.
What is the purpose of HITRUST CSF?
The HITRUST CSF is a certifiable framework that aims to align an organization’s risk management, cybersecurity, and compliance processes with industry-accepted regulatory and security standards. It’s widely adopted by organizations looking to improve their security posture, demonstrate it to prospects during security reviews, and shorten deal cycles.
While the framework is applicable to organizations across industries, it’s particularly useful for those that collect or manage protected health information (PHI). For example:
- Healthcare providers
- Insurance companies
- Third parties and contractors in healthcare (faxing companies, shredding businesses, etc.)
HITRUST also enables continuous monitoring and periodic reviews, which helps organizations effortlessly maintain their security posture at any scale.
{{cta_withimage19="/cta-modules"}} | HITRUST Compliance Checklist
9 growth-boosting benefits of the HITRUST CSF
The latest version of the HITRUST CSF (v11.3.0) focuses on making extensive security and compliance programs efficient and cost-effective. Besides offering the general benefits of implementing a robust security framework, it has a few unique advantages most frameworks don’t provide.
In the following sections, we’ll focus on 10 standout benefits of the framework across three categories—this table provides a quick snapshot:
I. Improved market value
HITRUST is recognized and respected in many sectors, which brings about the following benefits:
1. Deeper market access
HITRUST certification directly unlocks new growth opportunities by letting you branch out into industries that expect it. While this is particularly true for the healthcare sector, it also goes for other industries, such as finance and artificial intelligence (AI).
With a HITRUST certificate, you get the advantage of proactively demonstrating the necessary security controls so your deals can move ahead without friction. It also minimizes the need to address repetitive security audits and questionnaires.
2. Gain market differentiators
Standing out in heavily regulated industries often boils down to providing complete security and assurance. Without a clear picture of your security posture, you might lose out on lucrative deals due to the inability to offer the peace of mind stakeholders are looking for.
HITRUST can prevent this because of its status as a globally recognized standard. It paints a transparent picture of a certificate holder’s security posture, which is a considerable marker differentiator in terms of trustworthiness.
3. Value creation
Holding a certificate from a well-known organization like the HITRUST Alliance is an excellent way to increase brand value. It provides assurance for potential investors and shareholders, which can contribute to higher market valuations.
It’s worth noting that security and compliance are rarely seen as direct revenue drivers, which makes related investments hard to justify. With HITRUST, you can create tangible value by continually improving and demonstrating your security posture.
The HITRUST CSF directly improves your security and compliance ROI in several ways, most notably:
- Reduced inefficiencies
- Less resource waste
- New business opportunities driven by a solid security posture
II. Better internal risk management
HITRUST can be a reliable framework to guide your internal risk management processes—the benefits include:
4. Actionable risk mitigation
Most organizations operate in a risk-diverse environment where continuous risk mitigation gets demanding with the increase in the number of vulnerabilities. According to a survey by the Enterprise Strategy Group, 70% of security professionals find it increasingly challenging to manage their security hygiene and posture.
HITRUST certification can resolve these challenges by helping organizations adopt proven, repeatable, and measurable methods to support risk reduction.
HITRUST’s Trust Report showed that only 0.64% of HITRUST-certified environments reported breaches in the last two years. HIITRUST also enables smoother risk mitigation for large and complex security infrastructures with its scalable scoping process that works for various risk profiles and levels.
{{cta_webinar3="/cta-modules"}} | Choosing the right HITRUST certification level and streamlining implementation
5. Better cyber insurance
HITRUST lets you access better cyber insurance plans (that insure you against cyberattacks) with streamlined underwriting, predictable renewals, and discounted preferred rates, which makes the insurance cost-effective.
Additionally, HITRUST CSF is cyber threat adaptive as the framework leverages intelligence models to stay on top of the newest threats. Its one- or two-year certification validity ensures your controls keep up with the necessary updates.
6. Liability reduction
Developing a security program from scratch requires a lot of in-house niche expertise, which is not possible for many organizations. Further, the loopholes in your program can lead to liability situations like non-compliance fines and data loss following a breach.
By adopting HITRUST, you get a prescriptive, complete, and proven cybersecurity framework to build, execute, and validate a security and compliance program without guesswork. Following the framework leads to reduced liability in terms of data breaches, regulatory penalties, and other legal repercussions.
III. Smoother security and compliance programs
HITRUST certification comes with the following additional advantages that help you run smoother security and compliance programs:
7. Commercial compliance (customer-oriented)
Security compliances are more than a nice-to-have—they’re often a deal-breaker when it comes to both B2B and B2C relationships. B2B clients are often extra cautious about their partners’ security postures.
In many cases, specific controls encompassed by the HITRUST CSF will be included as contractual compliance obligations. Some companies even request a HITRUST certificate before considering partnership with an organization. As a result, completing the certification process makes customer-facing compliance significantly easier.
8. Streamlined regulatory compliance
Comprehensive frameworks like HIPAA can be ambiguous and open to interpretation, which makes their implementation challenging. The HITRUST CSF fixes this by concretizing security requirements and controls, making regulatory compliance easier in the process.
By getting HITRUST-certified, you can implement numerous controls that overlap with those of 50+ major authoritative sources, including:
As a result, HITRUST gets you closer to ensuring compliance with your industry’s obligatory regulations and voluntary standards.
{{cta_withimage19="/cta-modules"}} | HITRUST Compliance Checklist
9. Better AI assurance
While AI has revolutionized many industries over the past few years, a lack of proper regulation remains an issue. Organizations that wish to leverage AI technologies are often concerned about the security implications of doing so.
To resolve this problem, HITRUST released the industry’s first AI Assurance Program, which is included in HITRUST CSF versions 11.2 onward.
The program prioritizes AI risk management as a foundational consideration, promoting ethical, effective, and secure AI adoption. Considering the public perception of the volatility in AI products, leveraging the program can promote customer trust.
Role of automation in getting HITRUST CSF certified efficiently
Implementing HITRUST controls can seem like an elaborate process at first, especially if you consider higher assessment levels with numerous in-scope controls and evidence-gathering tasks. If performed manually, a HITRUST assessment can take a long time—and demand excessive monitoring workflows, which makes teams reconsider the resources-used-to-benefits ratio.
That’s why automation solutions like Vanta are essential when pursuing HITRUST. Automation can shorten the time frame and remove inefficiencies from your process. For instance, with the right automation configurations, you can perform a quick gap analysis during your readiness assessment and proactively address any issues.
Additionally, you can organize information about your in-scope security controls and scoring rubrics in a single hub before audits—your HITRUST external assessor can simply use the automation platform to review the evidence and determine the validity of your HITRUST metrics.
Unlock the benefits of HITRUST certification with Vanta
Vanta is a trust management platform that automates up to 80% of the HITRUST certification requirements. As a HITRUST automation partner, Vanta is the fastest way to become HITRUST certified, accelerate deal velocity, and reduce reactive asks.
Vanta offers a HITRUST-vetted security framework that simplifies and expedites the certification process. The platform’s robust HITRUST CSF product is equipped with features that make your workflows resource-efficient—you can expect:
- Automated gap analysis to expedite readiness assessments
- Streamlined evidence collection that leverages over 350 integrations
- Centralized tracking of HITRUST requirements with actionable guidance
- Cross-referencing with other frameworks to reduce duplicative work
- Built-in resources for documentation and testing
- Integration with MyCSF
Check out this free HITRUST webinar for more information.
You can also tap into Vanta’s extensive partner network to find reputable external assessors who can guide you through all MyCSF-related tasks.
Get a demo of the HITRUST CSF product to get a tailored presentation for your business.
{{cta_simple16="/cta-modules"}} | HITRUST product page
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