Shared responsibility is a foundational concept in HITRUST, especially in environments that use third-party cloud or managed services. It defines which security controls are owned by the organization and which are managed by vendors such as AWS, Azure, or SaaS providers. Candidates must understand that while some controls can be inherited, accountability cannot. HITRUST formalizes this relationship through documented inheritance statements that specify the scope, evidence, and degree of reliance permitted. This allows organizations to avoid duplicating work while ensuring that inherited controls meet equivalent assurance standards.

In real-world application, effective shared responsibility management means identifying dependencies early during scoping and maintaining current, validated documentation from service providers. For example, inheriting a cloud provider’s encryption control does not remove the organization’s duty to configure key management properly. MyCSF supports direct inheritance mapping, allowing evidence reuse while retaining traceability. For the exam, candidates should focus on how shared responsibility aligns with assurance integrity and how inherited evidence must be periodically validated to maintain certification confidence.
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