Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act (HIPPA)

What is it?

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a set of standards and rules organising the use of healthcare data in the United States. It was further amended to include Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information and Security Standards for the Protection of Electronic Protected Health Information.

The act puts into operation the protections contained in the Privacy Rule by addressing the technical and non-technical safeguards that organizations must put in place to secure individuals’ “electronic protected health information” (e-PHI).

Why should I use the HIPAA Compliance Standard?

HIPAA’s role in cloud architecture is to have organizations protect the privacy of their users’ health information while allowing these same organisations to adopt and create new technologies to improve the quality and efficiency of patient care.

Organizations found to have breached can be fined up to $1.5m per year per violation (or per record) with the tiered fine being dependent on the perceived level of negligence. In addition to the fine, your organization’s name will permanently be on their violations list showing the offence, date, and number of those affected.

How can Conformity help?

Cloud Conformity monitors your compliance with HIPAA using the related rules shown below, and provides a report for quick, automated assessment.

To view the status of your environments against these rules in Conformity simply:

• Head to “Browse All Checks
• Open "Filter Checks"
• Select “HIPAA”
• Scroll down to see the results