GCP PHI Exposure Remediation

Learn how to fix exposed PHI in GCP environments. Follow step-by-step remediation guidance for HIPAA compliance.

data exposure

HIPAA

gcp

Why It Matters

The core goal is to quickly remediate all instances where Protected Health Information (PHI) has been inadvertently exposed within your GCP environment. Fixing PHI exposures is critical for organizations subject to HIPAA regulations, as it helps you prevent data breaches, avoid regulatory penalties, and maintain patient trust by ensuring all healthcare data is properly secured and access-controlled.

Primary Risk: Data exposure of PHI leading to HIPAA violations

Relevant Regulation: HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules

Swift remediation minimizes exposure windows and demonstrates due diligence in protecting patient health information across your cloud infrastructure.

Prerequisites

Permissions & Roles

  • Cloud Asset Inventory Admin
  • DLP Administrator
  • BigQuery Data Editor
  • Storage Admin (for Cloud Storage)

External Tools

  • GCP CLI (gcloud)
  • Cyera DSPM account
  • Terraform (optional)

Prior Setup

  • GCP project with billing enabled
  • Cloud DLP API enabled
  • Asset Inventory API enabled
  • Service account configured

Introducing Cyera

Cyera is a modern Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) platform that discovers, classifies, and continuously monitors your sensitive data across cloud services. Using advanced AI and Named Entity Recognition (NER) models, Cyera automatically identifies PHI exposures in GCP services like BigQuery, Cloud Storage, and Cloud SQL, then provides automated remediation workflows to quickly secure exposed healthcare data while maintaining HIPAA compliance.

Step-by-Step Guide

1
Assess the exposure scope

Use Cyera's discovery dashboard to identify all locations where PHI has been exposed. Review exposure severity, affected data volumes, and public accessibility status across BigQuery datasets, Cloud Storage buckets, and database instances.

gcloud asset search-all-resources --scope=projects/PROJECT_ID --asset-types=bigquery.googleapis.com/Dataset

2
Implement immediate containment

For publicly accessible resources, immediately revoke public access permissions. Update IAM policies to remove "allUsers" and "allAuthenticatedUsers" principals from exposed datasets and storage buckets containing PHI.

gsutil iam ch -d allUsers gs://BUCKET_NAME

3
Apply data-level protection

Configure Cloud DLP to redact or encrypt PHI fields in place. For BigQuery tables, use column-level security and create authorized views that mask sensitive data. Enable customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) for additional protection.

bq update --set_label environment:production dataset_name.table_name

4
Establish ongoing monitoring

Configure Cyera's continuous monitoring to detect future PHI exposures automatically. Set up Cloud Audit Logs to track all access to remediated resources and create alerts for policy violations or unauthorized access attempts.

Architecture & Workflow

Cloud Asset Inventory

Discovers exposed resources across GCP services

Cyera AI Engine

Classifies PHI using NER and risk assessment

Cloud DLP API

Implements data masking and encryption

IAM & Monitoring

Enforces access controls and audit trails

Remediation Flow Summary

Identify Exposures → Contain Access → Protect Data → Monitor Compliance

Best Practices & Tips

Prioritization Strategy

  • Address publicly accessible PHI first
  • Focus on high-volume exposures
  • Prioritize customer-facing systems

Data Protection Methods

  • Use column-level encryption for structured data
  • Implement tokenization for frequently accessed fields
  • Apply data masking for non-production environments

Common Pitfalls

  • Forgetting to check Cloud Functions and App Engine logs
  • Missing PHI in BigQuery streaming inserts
  • Overlooking legacy Compute Engine instances

References & Further Reading

Next Steps

🛡️ Prevent: Set up PHI protection policies 🔍 Detect: Implement PHI discovery scanning