In response to the complex regulatory healthcare requirements, the Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST), in cooperation with over 150 healthcare companies, has developed the Common Security Framework (CSF).  The framework helps address the challenges by enhancing and providing specificity to the existing standards and regulatory requirements.  At its core, the CSF is based on the ISO/IEC 27001:2005 and ISO/IEC 27002:2005 standards.  These guidelines were further enhanced by leveraging the NIST 800 series of frameworks, ISO/IEC 27799:2008 Health Informatics, HIPAA and best practices contributed by the HITRUST participants. 

The group’s aim will be to help organizations evaluate, understand, and implement the new framework within their organization.  Each meeting will be focused on exploring one or more healthcare industry topics, control categories, or implementation issues that will be published in advance, as well as allow for time for a free-form discussion between organizations in sharing their experiences with CSF. 

All SIG related announcements, communication, and schedule of meetings will be published on: http://hitrustsigmn.web.officelive.com/default.aspx.