What Your Company Should Know About HIPAA Compliant Cloud Storage
Should you be in the health care industry you will need HIPAA compliant cloud storage to protect your business from hardware failure, disasters as well as other disruptive incidents. Perhaps you have looked into some options for compliant online backups and been put off by the complexity. This article will give you some insight as well as some solutions to choosing the right provider.
HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, sets the standard for protecting sensitive patient data. Any organization that deals with patient records must make sure that all of the required physical, network, and process safety measures are within place and followed.
The HIPAA Privacy Rule addresses the saving, accessing and sharing of medical and personal data of the individual, as the HIPAA Security Rule more specifically outlines national security standards to protect health data created, received, maintained or transmitted electronically.
In the event that you are hosting your data with a HIPAA compliant hosting provider, they must have certain administrative, physical and technical safeguards in place, based on the United States Department of Medicine as well as Human Services. The physical and technical safeguards are most relevant to services provided by your HIPAA compliant host as listed below.
The Most Important Factors:
Physical safeguards include limited facility access and control, with authorized access in place. All covered entities, or businesses that has to be HIPAA compliant, must have policies about use and access to workstations and electronic media. This can include transferring, removing, disposing and re-using electronic media and electronically protected health information (also known as e-PHI).
Technical safeguards require access control to allow only the authorized to gain access to electronic protected health data. Access control includes using unique user IDs, a crisis access procedure, automatic log off and encryption and decryption.
While it’s certainly possible for a business to maintain their very own cloud storage, in lots of cases companies lack the resources to do so. They can also just prefer the added security of having a second, off-site location for data storage, particularly should the business providing the storage can add their very own measure of data loss prevention.
The advantage to using an outside cloud storage service, then, is to both offer a complete backup of their data and alleviating the stress on in-house computer systems. It can additionally help to free up employee time better allocated to other purposes. Similarly, it just might not be a possibility in-house if there’s no one on the staff who may have the correct expertise to manage the task. We highly recommend your check out these cloud DNS solutions for more information regarding cloud storage services.
Audit reports, or tracking logs, should be implemented to keep records of activity on hardware and software. This really is especially helpful to pinpoint the source or cause of the security violations.
Policies And Network Security:
Technical policies must also cover integrity controls, or measures put in area to confirm that e-PHI has not been altered or destroyed. IT disaster recovery and offsite backup are key to be certain that any electronic media errors or failures may be quickly remedied and patient health information may be recovered accurately and intact.
Network, or transmission, security will be the last technical safeguard required of HIPAA compliant hosting to protect against unauthorized public access of e-PHI. This concerns all methods of transmitting data, whether or not it be e-mail, Internet, as well as over a non-public network, for example an exclusive cloud.
With an expanding range of individuals and businesses needing a way to safely store computer data, the advantages of cloud storage are becoming more apparent daily. As information is being produced, hackers are continually inventing new ways to get their practical it and so the need to keep it safe and accessible is of paramount importance. It is vital you choose a reputable company to back up your data and keep it safe.
