HITRUST CSF

The HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) consolidates HIPAA, NIST, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, and other frameworks into a single, prescriptive control set tailored for healthcare organizations. HITRUST certification signals to healthcare enterprise clients — hospital systems, payers, and pharma companies — that a vendor has been assessed against the most comprehensive set of healthcare security controls available.

HITRUST offers three certification tiers: e1 (essential, one-year validity), i1 (implemented, one-year validity, broader control scope), and r2 (risk-based, two-year validity, full assessment). Most healthcare enterprise clients require r2 — the highest tier — for vendors handling PHI. The r2 assessment process involves a HITRUST-authorized assessor and can take 4-8 months.

HITRUST is not a replacement for HIPAA compliance — it is a framework that operationalizes HIPAA compliance at a higher standard of evidence. A HITRUST r2 certification does not mean you have a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement in place. It means your security controls meet a standard that provides strong evidence of HIPAA compliance. Both are required for healthcare enterprise vendor relationships.

We build systems targeting HITRUST CSF controls as part of our healthcare engineering practice — not as a separate audit exercise. HITRUST-relevant controls (access management, encryption, audit logging, incident response) are implemented at the architecture level and generate evidence continuously. Our teams work with HITRUST-authorized assessors and can target r2 certification for systems built compliance-native.

Compliance-Native Architecture Guide

Design principles and a structured checklist for building software that is compliant by default — not compliant by retrofit. Covers data architecture, access controls, audit trails, and vendor due diligence.