The HCLS Compliance Crisis: Why Cloud Security Isn’t Meeting the Moment

In 2024, 276 million healthcare records were breached, roughly 83% of the US population, even as organizations spent heavily on security tools and training. Regulators are no longer satisfied with static policies or once-a-year audits. Upcoming HIPAA NPRM updates will require mandatory MFA, encryption in transit and at rest, runtime network segmentation, and continuous proof of control. Most HCLS organizations are still trying to meet those mandates with security models built for data centers, not modern multicloud workloads. This issue primer is for healthcare and life sciences security and compliance leaders who need to close that gap before the next audit.