Nicholas Heesters

Attorney, Senior advisor for Cybersecurity, HHS Office for Civil Rights

Nicholas Heesters is a certified information privacy professional with over 25 years of experience supporting technology and information security efforts in many diverse industries including financial services, government, defense, education and healthcare. He earned a Master of Engineering in Computer and Software Engineering from Widener University and his Juris Doctor from the Widener University School of Law. Currently, Heesters works for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights supporting HIPAA compliance and enforcement activities.

HHS OCR HIPAA Regulatory Update

Presented by Nicholas Heesters • July 11, 2022

An update on several important HIPAA rulemaking, regulatory and enforcement efforts in the works at the agency, and an analysis of evolving breach trends This session will examine: HHS OCR's consideration of “recognized” security practices in HIPAA enforcement determinations Proposed changes to the...

Secure Patient Access to Electronic Health Data: Why is This So Hard?

Presented by Vimala Devassy , Nicholas Heesters , Mikki Smith • March 4, 2021

HHS OCR issued a record number of HIPAA settlements in 2020 in cases involving patient “right of access” violations. Meanwhile, compliance with HHS’ health IT interoperability and information blocking regulations – which include provisions for providing patients secure access to their health information via...

HHS OCR Breach Trends and Compliance Regulatory Update

Presented by Sonia Arista , Chris Frenz , Nicholas Heesters • April 10, 2019

In this session, HHS OCR provides an update on its latest HIPAA compliance and regulatory efforts - including possible modifications to the HIPAA rules. Then a panel of experts discusses: Latest health data breach trends, including soaring hacker incidents; The evolving regulatory climate and its impact on health...

Breach Trends Panel - Lessons from Wall of Shame - We've Been Breached. Now What?

Presented by Connie Barrera , Richard Conti , Nicholas Heesters • September 25, 2018

Following the HHS OCR presentation, a panel of CISOs and regulatory and legal experts will dig into how major health data breach trends are changing, and why. For instance: What lessons can be learned from some of the latest breach trends, including the steady surge in reported hacker incidents Cybercriminals,...

The State of Healthcare Cybersecurity and Compliance: Is HIPAA Helping or Hindering Cybersecurity Efforts

Presented by Nicholas Heesters • September 25, 2018

An inside view of what HHS OCR is seeing on the healthcare sector privacy and security landscape, and what the agency has in the works to address those challenges. That includes: Insights from OCR's latest breach and compliance investigations of covered entities and BAs. An update on OCR's HIPAA enforcement...