HHS wants help securing its health IT assets

The Health and Human Services Department is looking for a contractor who can assist in reducing cybersecurity risks for electronic health records.

The Health and Human Services Department is looking for a contractor who can assist in reducing cybersecurity risks for electronic health records.

Under the economic stimulus law health IT provisions, which went into effect on Feb. 17, HHS' National Coordinator for Health IT must develop a plan to identify and address cyber threats. The plan is to be carried out in conjunction with White House cybersecurity objectives outlined in May 2009.


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HHS is planning to award a contract to address strategic planning, interagency cybersecurity cooperation, increased public awareness, incident response, research and development and identity management, with respect to health IT, according to a Feb. 16 notice on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site.

“The purpose of this contract is to carry out a sequence of related activities with the goal of understanding security risks to health information technology, planning and executing risk mitigation strategies, testing certain risk mitigation strategies, communicating to stakeholders the results, lessons learned, and actions that can be taken to reduce risk in health IT, which will create the foundation for policy development,” the notice states.

The opportunity is only available to contractors under HHS' program support centers 2009 task order acquisition vehicle.