Compliance & Risk Advisory
Governance
that holds
under pressure.
HIPAA Security Risk Assessments, AI Risk Assessments, and compliance program builds for regulated enterprises navigating AI adoption and audit scrutiny. Built on two decades of operational execution in healthcare technology and cybersecurity.
Core Services
Where we
engage.
Every engagement is grounded in operational reality — not frameworks on a slide. The work is structured to produce auditable outcomes, not activity reports. Five domains. One firm with the credentials to deliver across all of them.
01
HIPAA Compliance
End-to-end HIPAA operationalization — not checklists, but working programs. Risk assessment, BAA architecture, technical safeguard design, HITRUST alignment, and audit-readiness across cloud environments. Compliance as operational discipline.
02
AI Governance
Practical AI governance for regulated enterprises — shadow AI detection, model inventory, risk scoring, policy frameworks, and executive dashboards. Built for CISOs, compliance leaders, and legal teams who need defensible programs, not aspirational ones.
03
HIPAA Breach Response Preparedness
Most organizations discover their breach response program doesn't work during an actual breach. We build and stress-test yours before that happens — through realistic simulation exercises that expose gaps in detection, containment, notification, and documentation. Built by someone who has led breach simulations for some of the largest health systems in the country — which means we know exactly where programs fail.
04
BAA Architecture & Review
Most Business Associate Agreements were drafted once and never revisited. As cloud environments expand and AI vendors multiply, BAA coverage gaps have become a genuine liability — often invisible until OCR comes looking. We audit your existing BAA inventory, identify coverage gaps, and restructure agreements to reflect your actual operating environment.
05
M&A Due Diligence
Security, compliance, and financial due diligence for healthcare technology acquisitions — on both sides of the table. The core question we answer: does the target's safeguarding of ePHI actually hold up against 45 CFR §164.308–§164.312, or has "HIPAA compliant" been asserted rather than demonstrated. We assess Security Rule adherence, BAA coverage, AI governance maturity, regulatory liability, and unit economics before close. For portfolio companies, we prepare the compliance and security narrative that sophisticated acquirers and investors will scrutinize.
Signature Offering
Security Risk
Assessment —
HIPAA & AI.
Most organizations have never had a true HIPAA Security Risk Assessment — they've had a checklist. And almost none have assessed the risk introduced by AI tools their workforce is already using.
We deliver both in a single, integrated engagement: a HIPAA Security Risk Assessment built to the standards the Security Rule actually requires, combined with a structured AI Risk Assessment that inventories your AI footprint, scores risk by use case, and produces a governance baseline your compliance and legal teams can stand behind.
The output is auditable, board-presentable, and built for organizations that will face regulatory scrutiny — not organizations that hope they won't.
Request an AssessmentHIPAA Security Risk Assessment
A comprehensive evaluation of administrative, physical, and technical safeguards against the requirements of 45 CFR §164.308–§164.312. We identify vulnerabilities, assess the likelihood and impact of threats to ePHI, and produce a prioritized remediation roadmap with evidence documentation suitable for OCR review.
AI Risk Assessment
A structured evaluation of how AI tools are being used — or are already in use — across your organization. We inventory your AI footprint, including shadow AI, assess each use case for risk to ePHI, regulatory compliance, and data governance, and produce a risk-scored register with policy recommendations and a governance baseline.
What You Receive
A consolidated assessment report with an executive summary, detailed findings, a risk register, and a prioritized remediation plan. Structured for three audiences simultaneously: your compliance team, your legal counsel, and your board.
Background
Built on
execution,
not theory.
The credibility behind this work comes from having built the infrastructure, navigated the audits, raised the capital, and led the teams — in regulated environments where the cost of getting it wrong is measured in patient safety, regulatory action, or enterprise trust.
Bowen & Company was founded to solve a problem the healthcare industry was unwilling to acknowledge: cloud infrastructure was being adopted without the governance architecture to make it defensible under HIPAA. As Founder and former CISO of ClearDATA, we built the category from scratch — multi-cloud security, compliance automation, and healthcare-specific controls — scaling to $68M ARR with zero data breaches across the company's entire operational history. While at ClearDATA we raised $82M from institutional investors including Norwest, Humana, and Merck.
Before that, we built DirectClarity during the Accountable Care era — a clinically integrated network platform that connected approximately 43,000 physicians and helped health systems form the care coordination infrastructure required under emerging ACO models. Another successful commercial outcome. The pattern across both companies is the same: identify a governance or infrastructure gap in a regulated market, build the operational architecture to address it at scale, and execute with precision.
Today, that same architecture is being applied to AI governance through Control Layer AI — helping regulated enterprises build AI programs that are auditable, transparent, and defensible under emerging regulatory frameworks. Our advisory practice runs in parallel, bringing HIPAA Security Risk Assessments and AI Risk Assessments directly to compliance, legal, and security teams that need them. For fractional or retained CISO leadership engagements, see Named CISO.
Perspectives
From the blog.
Practitioner commentary on HIPAA compliance, AI governance, and healthcare cybersecurity — written by Chris Bowen, not a content team.
In the Press
Where we've
been quoted.
ClearDATA to Present HIMSS Webinar: "5 Ways to Protect Your Organization from a Ransomware Attack"
Quoted as Founder & Chief Privacy and Security Officer on ransomware preparedness for healthcare organizations.
Read → PR Newswire · HIMSS16Selected to Present "Developing a Cloud Security Roadmap" at HIMSS16
HIMSS selected Chris Bowen to present the cloud security roadmap session at one of healthcare IT's largest annual conferences.
Read → Business WireClearDATA Achieves Fourth HITRUST CSF® Certification
"Since ClearDATA's inception, our mission has remained steadfast: to make healthcare better every single day. We do that by empowering healthcare organizations to harness the power of the public cloud for innovation — safely, securely, and compliantly."
Quoted as Chief Privacy & Security Officer and Founder on achieving consecutive HITRUST certifications — a benchmark few healthcare cloud platforms reach.
Read → TMCnetClearDATA Achieves HITRUST CSF® Certification
Quoted as Founder and Chief Privacy and Security Officer on ClearDATA's HITRUST certification and its significance for healthcare data security.
Read → BioSpace / Business WireClearDATA Joins the Healthcare and Public Health Sector Coordinating Council
Quoted on contributing healthcare expertise to shaping national guidelines on digital health, telemedicine, and patient data resilience.
Read → PRWebClearDATA Achieves HITRUST r2 Certification — Highest Level of Information Protection Assurance
Quoted as Founder & CISO on achieving HITRUST r2 — the most rigorous certification level, demonstrating the highest standard of compliance assurance.
Read → AI-Tech Park · GlobeNewswireThe 2022 State of Cloud Security Among Healthcare Providers
"Healthcare is modernizing at an unprecedented pace, migrating to the cloud and embracing the many benefits of digital health. But healthcare providers are new to the cloud, and the industry still has a long way to go to achieve the foundational level of security needed to keep patient data safe."
Quoted as Founder and CISO on cloud security maturity gaps across the healthcare provider landscape — findings from a survey of 200+ IT and compliance leaders.
Read → ClearDATA · YouTubeCracking the Code Episode 24: Q&A with CISO and Founder, Chris Bowen
Featured in ClearDATA's executive interview series covering AI governance, patient data protection, and the evolving healthcare security landscape. Published September 2024.
Watch → Data 360 ConferenceChris Bowen to Speak on Protecting PII at Data 360 Conference
Featured panelist on protecting personally identifiable information — drawing on experience across DirectClarity, ClearDATA, and Arizona public-policy work in healthcare security.
Read → RBMA Fall Educational ConferenceFeatured Speaker on HIPAA Compliance at the Radiology Business Management Association
Selected as featured speaker on HIPAA compliance. Credentials presented: MBA, CIPP/US, CIPP/IT — a combination rare among healthcare technology founders.
Read → MedCity News · HLTH 2024Cybersecurity Panel Takeaways from HLTH: Deepfakes, Change Healthcare, and the Limits of Cyber Insurance
"One little slip up with an MFA and look what happened, right?"
Quoted as Founder and CISO of ClearDATA at HLTH 2024 in Las Vegas, on the Change Healthcare breach, deepfake threats, and the gaps in cyber insurance coverage for healthcare organizations.
Read → Healthcare IT NewsSenator Warner Issues Healthcare Cybersecurity Policy Options: One CISO Responds
"Some healthcare organizations have proven to be lax in their security controls. But many are doing everything right and yet still fall victim to attacks by nation-state actors, or criminal syndicates funded by nation-states."
Quoted as industry CISO responding to Senator Warner's federal healthcare cybersecurity policy paper — calling for a dedicated national healthcare cybersecurity leader.
Read →Engagement Models
How we
work together.
Engagements run on monthly or fixed-scope commitments — structured to produce measurable outcomes without long-term lock-in.
Advisory
Strategic Advisory
Ongoing strategic counsel on a retained basis. Board-level narrative development, regulatory strategy, and compliance decision support.
Project
Project Engagement
Scoped, time-bound engagements with defined deliverables. HIPAA and AI Risk Assessments, HIPAA program builds, AI governance frameworks, and compliance audits.
Get in Touch
Let's build
something
defensible.
If your organization is navigating AI governance, compliance complexity, or an upcoming audit — and you need a team that has operated at this level before — reach out.