Ever heard the story about the boy who put his finger in a dike to plug a leak? He did it because he knew a small leak could turn into a major breach—the sea would come crashing through to destroy his town. So, he sat there all night until help came, to ensure everything would remain safe.

In the hit film Interstellar, scientists discover a wormhole around the planet Saturn that leads to another galaxy far, far away and sends a team of astronauts through it to see if they can find a new home for humanity. It’s a journey that was made light years shorter—and more efficient.

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky,” said Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore. It’s a nice, optimistic sentiment, but if you’re a healthcare provider using the cloud, you’re likely thinking that, in your position, clouds are still plenty capable of ushering storms where your HIPAA compliance is concerned. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) provides clear rules about the storage and sharing of protected health information (PHI). All organizations that handle PHI are required to comply with HIPAA standards, but that can become a little trickier if you engage a cloud service provider (CSP). As long-time, highly experienced HIPAA assessors, we provide valuable insight and services that help organizations avoid any HIPAA missteps. In this article, we’re going to outline eight things you can do to ensure you stay compliant when engaging a cloud service provider (CSP) so that your cloud doesn’t “usher in any storms.”

In the famed series Lord of the Rings, the unlikely hero Frodo Baggins offers to carry the terrible burden of the One Ring to Mordor in order to destroy it and save all of Middle Earth from evil. Immediately after he makes this decision, he says, “Though I do not know the way.”

Someone once said that "a marathon is hundreds of miles. The finish is the last 26.2." Maybe that “someone” worked at the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) because they are coming to the “finish” at the end of their latest marathon, though it’ll still take some work and time to get over the line.

Think about the last time you went to a restaurant—what did you order? Was it your usual, or did you see a new addition to the menu that intrigued you so much you pulled the trigger and tried it?

You’ve likely heard the phrase “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”—or at least something like it, and the sentiment is true. It’s incredibly helpful to understand what pitfalls or stumbles occurred in the past so that the same traps aren’t fallen into, and it’s even more helpful when someone compiles a list of those pitfalls that more easily lay them all out.

All of us likely remember hearing something like this from our parents: “when I come in there, your room better be clean!”