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Hospitals can reduce remote-access risk without cutting off clinicians, administrators, or support teams by approving the access paths they need, strengthening identity checks, monitoring use, and testing emergency and downtime procedures with clinical staff. The right controls depend on each organization’s systems, workflows, and risk—not a blanket ban on remote access.

Why remote access needs to remain available—and controlled

Clinicians and hospital support teams may need to reach systems while working away from the facility, and remote tools can support access to patient information and remote care. At the same time, a legitimate connection can become an attacker’s route into hospital systems if it is misused or compromised. HHS’s Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3) identifies VPNs, remote desktop software, telehealth platforms, and secure messaging among healthcare remote-access tools, and warns that threat actors may co-opt legitimate software.

That makes remote access a clinical-continuity and risk-management issue, not simply a decision to enable or disable a technology. HC3’s October 4, 2023 alert, Securing Remote Access and Management Software, cautions that mitigating the risks is not as simple as patching or reconfiguring an application. Controls need to account for who connects, what they can reach, how access is observed, and how care continues during an emergency.

Map the access paths before changing them

Build an inventory of approved connections

List the remote pathways used by staff, administrators, vendors, and support teams. Include VPNs, remote desktop tools, telehealth and secure messaging platforms, and remote connections to connected devices where applicable. HC3 names several of these categories; the inventory should reflect the hospital’s own environment rather than assume the list is exhaustive.

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For each pathway, identify its purpose, the systems or data it can reach, the people or organizations that use it, and who owns its approval and review. Record which pathways are essential to particular clinical or support workflows. This gives security and clinical leaders a basis for prioritizing safeguards without inadvertently removing a needed function.

Make the approved route usable

Direct users and vendors to authorized, documented access methods. Unclear or unreliable processes can create pressure to use unapproved tools or workarounds. Before changing a connection, confirm with the teams that depend on it what work it supports and what an interruption would mean; then plan and communicate any transition around those needs.

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Strengthen identity and authentication

Use distinct identities and appropriate permissions

Give each user an identity that can be distinguished in access records, and grant only the access appropriate to that person’s role and task. HHS 405(d)’s Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices (HICP), 2023 edition, emphasizes clearly identifying users and maintaining audit trails of their access to data, applications, systems, and endpoints. Shared or indistinguishable accounts make it harder to determine who performed an action and to review access meaningfully.

Require MFA for remote and privileged access

Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) on remote network access and privileged or administrative access. HHS’s Healthcare Cybersecurity Performance Goals include MFA for remote access, and HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) relays CISA’s recommendation to require MFA for remote network access and privileged or administrative access. OCR’s June 2023 Cybersecurity Newsletter also relays CISA’s advice to enforce phishing-resistant MFA to the greatest extent possible.

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Where feasible, choose phishing-resistant MFA and fit the authentication method to the clinical workflow. Plan how users will authenticate during the situations the pathway is intended to support; a control that cannot be used reliably in a real workflow may undermine availability. MFA is one layer of protection, not a substitute for distinct identities, appropriate permissions, monitoring, risk analysis, and emergency planning.

Account for the risk of stolen credentials

A 2026 HHS Office of Inspector General audit of one large southeastern hospital found that an account-management application lacked strong identification and authentication controls, such as MFA. OIG used credentials obtained through phishing campaigns to access that application. This is a specific example of how weak authentication can expose an access path; it does not establish how common the weakness is across hospitals.

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Make remote activity attributable and reviewable

Maintain useful access trails

Keep audit trails that can connect access to specific users and cover the relevant data, applications, systems, and endpoints. HICP calls for clear user identification and access audit trails across these areas. The exact records and review process should reflect the systems and risks in the hospital’s environment.

Assign review and response ownership

Decide who reviews access activity, who investigates concerns, and how findings are escalated. Include the owners of the systems and workflows involved so that a response can distinguish expected clinical or support activity from activity that requires investigation. Records are useful only when the organization can interpret and act on them.

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Design emergency access and downtime procedures with clinicians

Define emergency access in advance

Document who is allowed to initiate emergency access, what necessary electronic protected health information (ePHI) or systems it enables, how that use is recorded, and how normal access is restored afterward. HHS OCR’s Audit Protocol—updated July 2018—includes procedures for obtaining necessary ePHI during an emergency and limiting who can initiate those procedures.

Test how care continues when systems are unavailable

Plan how critical processes will continue in emergency mode, and test and revise contingency procedures periodically. OCR’s audit protocol identifies emergency-mode operations and periodic contingency-plan testing and revision as review areas. Involve the people who must use the procedures, including clinicians, so exercises can expose workflow problems before a real outage. The organization must determine locally which safeguards and steps fit each system and care process.

Use risk management to keep the design current

For U.S. HIPAA covered entities and business associates, HHS OCR describes risk analysis and risk management as essential to Security Rule compliance and cybersecurity preparedness. OCR’s Security Rule Guidance Material also points organizations to guidance on remote use and access. Neither a particular configuration nor this article guarantees compliance; this is not legal advice.

Review remote-access decisions when systems, vendors, clinical workflows, or threats change. HHS’s Healthcare Cybersecurity Performance Goals are voluntary prioritized practices, not a universal network design or a replacement for evaluating the organization’s own risks. Treat the resulting access design as an ongoing management responsibility rather than a one-time software purchase.

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