Top 3 WordPress Plugins for HIPAA Security

Congratulations on setting up your practice as a healthcare professional and establishing the necessary components, despite the challenges encountered along the way. The successful outcome has enabled you to assist patients, and your commendable achievement also includes a visually appealing website.

The news of expensive healthcare data breaches continues to emerge with recent cases such as Banner Health, which settled a HIPAA violation case for $1.25 million, and New England Dermatology, facing a penalty of $300,640 for HIPAA privacy violations.

If it happens to you, which is a possibility, you could face grave consequences. Most importantly, your patients may experience a lack of attention or treatment.

It is hoped that you have already taken these factors into consideration. Nevertheless…

Perhaps when your website was initially launched, you believed that it did not meet the requirements for necessitating HIPAA Security Rule safeguards. You reasoned that since our website is not the main platform for storing patient data, we heavily depend on paper forms at our office.

If any part of your website collects patient identifiers, such as names, addresses, medical record numbers, or even IP addresses, whether through a patient intake form or web portal, it is essential to safeguard your patients’ privacy.

Given all of these considerations, let us examine three plugins that are both excellent and cost-effective for enhancing the security of your website.

Top 3 WordPress Plugins for HIPAA Security

1. WP 2FA – “Two Factor Authentication”

WP 2FA is an excellent choice for enhancing security during the sign-on process with over 40,000+ installations and fantastic reviews.

The reason why this is important is because it helps us to think in an organized and logical manner, ensuring that we do not miss any crucial details or skip important steps.

Standard WordPress logins make use of a single sign-on, known as “single-factor,” which entails the use of a regular username/password combination.

For the following reasons, it is wise to avoid this single-point-of-failure situation, as the downside is that if anyone were to steal these credentials, they would be able to acquire full access to your site and potentially engage in activities such as stealing sensitive protected health information (PHI), installing malware, or completely damaging your site to the point of being offline.

• Studies have shown that multi-factor authentication is “effective at blocking 100% of automated bot attacks, 99% of bulk phishing attacks, and 66% of targeted attacks,” as reported in the HIPAA Journal.

• Compliance with HIPAA – Since HIPAA requires policies and procedures for authorizing secure access to ePHI, it makes sense to avoid a single point of failure. The Department of Health and Human Services knew this when they began recommending the use of 2FA almost fifteen years ago.

• Patient Safety – According to the American Medical Association, cybersecurity is now understood as a critical patient safety issue. Insecure systems can lead to exploitation of your patients, fines for HIPAA violations, potential lawsuits and legal proceedings, reputation loss, and business loss… need we go on? Strengthen your security posture now with an integration-friendly solution that will help preserve the well-being of your patients and practice.

• Remote access to systems is on the rise, spurred by a pandemic and the rise of connected devices. Since stolen identities account for the majority of data loss occurrences, insist that your remote workers use it; in fact, as a recent Data Breach Report suggests, “2FA everything you can.” Smartphones can easily be used for authentication through readily available apps through Authy, Google, and others.

A plugin, such as WP 2FA, enhances security during the sign-on process by introducing a second layer of authentication. This involves entering a time-sensitive one-time passcode (OTP). This code, which expires or alters after approximately 30 seconds, can be easily received on your smartphone via SMS or email. As a result, even if someone were to obtain your password, they would still require the OTP to access your site.

It should be emphasized that 2FA does not eliminate the requirement for strong passwords. It is crucial to always enforce the use of strong passwords because phishing scams have enabled attackers to intercept SMS messages. (Utilizing a password manager can assist in making the use of strong, intricate passwords more manageable).

You can easily install WP 2FA by using a front-end page on your website, which means you do not have to access the WordPress dashboard. Additionally, WP 2FA is compatible with many other 3rd-party plugins and can be customized to match your brand’s image. The prices for WP 2FA start at $29 per year for the basic Starter plugin and go up to $99 per year for the Enterprise version.

2. iThemes Security 

The iThemes Security plugin provides real-time, 24/7 WordPress security with over 1 million active installations. It monitors any security-related event on your site and displays important security activity on a dynamic dashboard. This includes brute force attacks, banned users, active lockouts, site scan results, and more (available in the Pro version).

The importance of this is the ability to think sequentially.

• Just as forcing open a poorly-constructed door with a cheap lock on it is easily accomplished, so too, a single point of failure with a poor password will allow your site to be easily broken into, or “brute-forced” open. This is a common attack hackers use, accomplished by repeatedly querying possible passwords via an automated system that will quickly generate character combinations. iThemes Security automatically identifies and stops common methods of attack on WordPress sites, along with others. 

• iThemes Security hides your login page (wp-login.php, wp-admin, admin, and login) to make it more difficult to find by automated attacks. 

• iThemes Security bans unauthorized users, permanently blocking repeat offenders from accessing your site.

• Network Brute Force Protection – The iThemes Security community and is over a million websites strong; if anyone tries to break into a website in the community, iThemes Security will block them across the network.

Covered entities are mandated by HIPAA regulations to establish reliable protocols for password creation, modifications, and protection in order to ensure data security. Utilizing robust passwords, in combination with the enhanced security measures offered by iThemes Security, will have a significant impact!

3. HIPAA Gauge

The HIPAA Gauge plugin from HIPAA Vault is a beneficial addition to your WordPress security, despite being relatively new. It scans your site and presents a dashboard with four gauges that display the real vulnerabilities affecting the important aspects of your WordPress site, such as the WordPress core, plugins, themes, and web server configuration.

The reason this is important is because

• A third of all WordPress sites are at least two versions behind.

WordPress users often neglect to update their sites despite the fact that each new version release of WordPress includes some security updates. As a result, the vulnerability of protected health data passing through these sites is significantly heightened.

• Weak plugins may be selected by users, opening a doorway for bad actors. 

Adding new plugins to your system will bring about important alterations, such as enhanced functionality. Nevertheless, it is crucial to understand that specific plugins will modify your database and also make it susceptible to threats. Consequently, it is imperative to keep a close watch on all plugin modifications and make certain that you have the most recent and compatible versions.

The HIPAA Gauge assesses weaknesses in plugins, themes, and the web server of the site where it is hosted. It includes a red, yellow, and green zone that visually indicates and calculates the percentage score of your website’s security status.

There is also an upgraded premium version of the plugin that provides a more detailed report of specific vulnerabilities, which may affect the website’s compliance with HIPAA guidelines.

Although it does not guarantee HIPAA compliance for your website, HIPAA Gauge is a valuable tool to assess the necessity of implementing security measures in order to attain it.

BONUS: WordPress Plugins Every Healthcare Website Must Have

WordPress healthcare plugins and WordPress medical records plugins are tools of value that are intended to provide exceptional features and pertinent data in order to aid the healthcare industry.

WordPress is an effective content management system (CMS) platform that offers numerous plugins specifically designed for healthcare professionals. By utilizing the WordPress healthcare plugin development service, you can ensure the security of your patients’ data, assist them in utilizing online booking options, provide live chat support to help clarify any uncertainties, and offer additional beneficial features.

You can also enhance the functionality of your healthcare website design and make it a source of revenue by incorporating additional features. To assist you, we have compiled a list of WordPress plugins that are ideal tools for your healthcare site.

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