If you have HIPAA privacy questions, please contact Debra Duncan (duncande@ecu.edu) at (252) 744-5200.
If you have HIPAA security questions, please contact Laverne Williams (williamsla@ecu.edu) at (252) 328-9000.
What are the HIPAA requirements with respect to disaster recovery efforts?
The Health Information Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) requires organizations falling under its regulations to take "reasonable" measures in providing disaster recovery solutions.
HIPAA does not define what measures must be completed, but it does note that failure to adequately recover from a disaster could lead to noncompliance. Failure to comply inevitably exposes the organization to possible fines.
For information on HIPAA or to view the HIPAA policies, please visit http://www.ecu.edu/hipaa.Where do I go for HIPAA training?
All faculty and staff who work with electronic protected health information must complete HIPAA Privacy training.
System administrators who support systems with electronic protected health information should complete the System Admin training. The course is located online in Blackboard at http://blackboard.ecu.edu.
Students and contract employees should complete the training online at https://www.ecu.edu/cs-dhs/hipaa/security/training.cfm.
"Disaster recovery" seems pretty self-explanatory. Is there any difference between that and "business continuity planning"?
Disaster recovery is the process by which you resume business after a disruptive event. The event might be something huge, an earthquake, for example, or something small, like malfunctioning software caused by a computer virus. Often, the two terms are married under the acronym BC/DR.
"Business continuity planning" describes how an organization responds to an event to ensure the business is running (even if manually or in a limited capacity). "Disaster Recovery" is having plans in place to handle the aftermath. Either DR or BC determine how a company will keep functioning after a disruptive event until its normal facilities are restored.
