INDUSTRY

Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) today announced that the Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA), Hawaii's leading provider of health care services, has selected CA's eTrust Identity and Access Management solutions to help ensure compliance with HIPAA security regulations. CA's eTrust Identity and Access Management suite will allow HMSA to maintain strict patient confidentiality and to centrally administer and secure technology services. The suite provides a common control point for managing digital identities and regulating access to sensitive information. This integrates service provisioning, policy enforcement and security auditing into a single, streamlined administrative solution. For example, eTrust Identity and Access Management will enable the adoption of highly secure and convenient access to sensitive information through complete single sign-on. HIPAA security regulations require certain health care insurers, providers and health care clearinghouses to establish procedures and mechanisms to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of electronic protected health information, and to ensure restoration of lost data. The regulations are scheduled to take effect in April 2005. "It's a tremendous challenge to both ensure patient confidentiality and give our professionals access to the tools they need to do their jobs," said Bob Russio, manager of Information Protection for HMSA. "The breadth of CA's identity and access management capabilities, combined with its powerful auditing functions, will enable us to meet this challenge and ensure our compliance with HIPAA mandates." HMSA's administrators will use the eTrust solution's intuitive Web-based console to define and administer user identities, enable access to services based on those identities, and audit services users have accessed. The CA solution will enable HMSA to deliver services in a rapid, automated and secure manner across a distributed computing environment that includes mainframe, AS/400, Solaris and Windows systems. HMSA selected CA's eTrust Identity and Access Management suite over competitive offerings because of its integration of diverse administrative functions, ease of implementation, broad platform support and proven applicability to the challenges associated with HIPAA compliance. "HIPAA security compliance will become a major operational burden to health care organizations that don't take an integrated, role-based approach to service provisioning and access control," said Bill Mann, vice president for eTrust security management at CA. "CA's eTrust Identity and Access Management suite enables these organizations to achieve compliance quickly -- without breaking the bank or overwhelming their already-overworked IT departments."