Although HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and\nAccountability Act, was signed into law in 1996, not much has been done to\nenforce compliance. The act was originally designed to keep patients\u2019 medical\ninformation safe, secure, and private. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
HIPAA was written and designed before the entire world went\nvirtual, leaving a lack of clear compliance standards for how information is\nstored or transmitted online. With most information being stored in such a\nmanner and no direct guidelines in place, many healthcare providers are\nactually committing what would amount to be HIPAA violations. If your office\nisn\u2019t utilizing HIPAA compliant methods, it may be time to switch to encrypted\nemail and file storage solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nMedical Industry\u2019s Troubling History with Security<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Healthcare facilities and practitioners routinely send\npatient information to each other via the internet. It\u2019s necessary for the\npatient \u2013 every person working to provide care for an individual needs to be\nprivy to the same information to assure the highest possible quality of\ntreatment. The problem with the digital transmission of this information is\nthat healthcare practices and hospitals aren\u2019t run by IT specialists \u2013 they\u2019re\nrun by doctors, nurses, surgeons, and medical assistants. They may be the best\ncare providers in the world, but they\u2019re certainly not the best cybersecurity\nexperts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Researchers found that nearly 200 medical imaging storage\nservers weren\u2019t password protected, leaving over 5 million patients open and\nexposed. Anyone could access a complete stranger\u2019s medical imaging from their\nphone or home computer with nearly no resistance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All of this can easily be avoided if healthcare facilities\nwere to communicate exclusively through encrypted email and encrypted cloud\nstorage. It\u2019s one small, easy, inexpensive change that will keep people\u2019s\npersonal information from getting into the wrong hands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What\nHIPAA Requires<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n HIPAA requires that all data must be encrypted any time it\nmoves between devices. It also requires that storage of that data is physically\nsecure, and that any data can be definitively deleted at any time. PrivateMail\nis designed to address every requirement of HIPAA<\/p>\n\n\n\n How\nEncrypted Email Works<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n PrivateMail uses something called OpenPGP encryption.\nOpenPGP utilizes something called keys to keep information secure between the\nsender and the recipient. The messages are end to end encrypted. The sender and\nthe recipient both have keys that are easy to automatically generate through\nPrivateMail. The recipient can only open the email they were sent if they have\nthe corresponding key. Third parties won\u2019t be able to access the contents of\nthe email or interpret it even if they could \u2013 they have no way to decrypt it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n PrivateMail Files also utilizes paranoid encrypted cloud storage for all files sent through our file sharing service. No one besides the intended recipient \u2013 not even the people at PrivateMail \u2013 will ever be able to see the files being sent due to encryption. Scanned medical documents and imaging will only be received by the health care provider or the patient they\u2019re being sent to. A third party will never have an opportunity to intercept. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Using\nPrivateMail For Your Medical Business<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n PrivateMail offers a business subscription service that\nallows medical care providers to utilize their custom domains and logos,\ncollaborate with accounts, and share contacts, 100 gigs of cloud storage, and\ncalendars. It\u2019s easy to make patient privacy a priority and become HIPAA\ncompliant \u2013 all it takes is a change in the way you send and receive emails. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Although HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, was signed into law in 1996, not much has been done to enforce compliance. The act was originally designed to keep patients\u2019 medical information safe, secure, and private. HIPAA was written and designed before the entire world went virtual, leaving a lack of clear compliance standards […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[38,37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100,"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}