HIPPA SECURITY DEADLINES REVIEWED FOR PHYSICIANS HIPAA Security: You Can Run, But You Can't Hide - Technical Security Mechanisms: "Required Controls for Open Systems
If your organization uses network controls to protect data traveling on an open (insecure) system, then HIPAA says you must implement all of the following security mechanisms.

Alarms
No organization is 100 percent impervious to attack. For a quick response to incursions, you need a way to warn administrators when an attack or intrusion is underway ? an alarm. This kind of alarm often is not an audible bell or whistle but a simple entry in log files, e-mails, or in some cases, pages or text messages. Regardless of the type of alarm, they all serve one purpose: to alert administrators of suspicious activity.
While alarms can be useful to draw attention to a specific activity, they easily can turn into a useless annoyance. This is much like the story of the boy who cried wolf. With an overly sensitive alarm system, administrators become so used to false alarms that they start to ignore all alarms. In this situation, alarms defeat themselves and become useless. "