The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has been protecting sensitive health data for more than a quarter century and remains one of the most recognizable data protection regulations to date. Despite the proliferation of data protection regulations that have occurred during this time, properly managing and securing protected health information (PHI) remains one of the most daunting tasks in compliance.
One of the challenges associated with handling medical data in accordance with HIPAA security requirements is that PHI can come in many different forms. In order to comply with HIPAA, healthcare organizations must ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all electronic PHI they create, receive, maintain, or transmit. They must also identify and protect against reasonably anticipated threats to the security or integrity of the information, protect against reasonably anticipated impermissible uses or disclosures, and ensure compliance by their workforce.
To accomplish these tasks, Coviant Software has developed a secure managed file transfer (MFT) platform called Diplomat MFT. This platform automates file encryption using OpenPGP and operates on encrypted channels using the SFTP and other secure transport protocols. It deploys behind the firewall and with an edge gateway in the network DMZ to ensure no user data, authentication data, or encryption keys are ever stored in the DMZ, keeping services and data safe from reasonably anticipated security threats. It also keeps access restricted only to authenticated users, and with support for multifactor authentication.
Furthermore, Diplomat MFT offers easy no-code installation, configuration, and operations, with all aspects of the data transfer process fully automated to minimize the risk of human error and to make workforce compliance easy. All operational records are retained for complete auditability, which is necessary to provide documentation necessary to prove compliance.
Managing PHI safely is a huge task, and there may be hundreds of different external destinations for this data that must be coordinated and executed each day. To achieve compliance with HIPAA and other data protection regulations, organizations must choose the right solutions to build their information security and data privacy programs. And as with maintaining a classic automobile, using the right tools can make a significant difference in the tune-up process to keep HIPAA compliance programs running like a well-oiled machine.
Overall, HIPAA remains a classic regulation that continues to run, chrome bumpers glinting in the sunlight, despite all the new souped-up modern acronyms hitting the market. In a world where data breaches are becoming increasingly common, HIPAA provides a trustworthy and reliable standard to protect sensitive personal data. As healthcare organizations continue to navigate the complexities of managing PHI, the right tools like Diplomat MFT from Coviant Software will play a vital role in keeping them compliant with HIPAA and other data protection regulations.