LuxSci Unveils New Website and Branding – A New Era of Personalized Healthcare Engagement

Company Announcements, Industry News
LuxSci
September 5, 2024

Today, we’re excited to unveil our new website and branding, reflecting the company’s next stage of growth and evolution – as well as our aspirations to bring more clarity to data security and the HIPAA compliance landscape for healthcare communications.

In an era where healthcare is rapidly evolving, personalized engagement and communications are more critical than ever, driving greater participation in today’s healthcare journeys and delivering better outcomes. At the same time, HIPAA compliance and the security of protected health information (PHI) are a constant concern for all healthcare organizations. New regulations and cybersecurity threats pop up almost daily and without warning.

At LuxSci, we believe that you can both protect PHI data and use it to carry out more personalized, more effective, and more inclusive healthcare experiences. Our new website and branding are designed to represent this belief, and to help you make the smartest decisions when it comes to secure healthcare communications and HIPAA compliance.

Personalization: The Key to Better Healthcare Engagement

With new healthcare initiatives aimed at increasing patient participation rapidly emerging, including connected care and value-based care, one-size-fits-all communication strategies are no longer effective. Today, patients and customers increasingly expect personalized, relevant, and timely communications over the channel of their choice – and organizations that can deliver on these expectations will deliver better healthcare outcomes for everyone involved. The problem is that patient portal adoption has been hovering at around 50-60% for years, leaving a large portion of the population out of the health conversation.

Now’s the time for healthcare organizations to take action by adopting a more multi-channel approach to communications – while remaining HIPAA-compliant. LuxSci’s new website highlights our capabilities in helping you protect and leverage PHI data for personalized healthcare engagement across email, text, and marketing channels. By combining secure communication channels with advanced personalization powered by PHI data, we empower healthcare organizations to connect with patients in more meaningful ways across the end-to-end healthcare journey.

A New Look for a New Era

Over the years, LuxSci has been at the forefront of providing secure healthcare communications, establishing itself as a leader in HIPAA-compliant email. We serve some of the healthcare industry’s largest organizations, securely sending hundreds of millions of emails per month for our customers. This includes athenaHealth, Delta Dental, Rotech Healthcare, and 1800 Contacts, to name a few.

The launch of our new website reinforces our strategy to deliver a secure multi-channel healthcare communications suite that includes high volume email, and support for text, marketing and forms – and more in the future. Today, LuxSci’s secure healthcare communications suite includes:

Secure High Volume Email – proven, highly scalable HIPPA-compliant email.
Secure Email Gateway – Automatically encrypt emails sent from Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or on-premises solutions for HIPAA compliance.
Secure Marketing – Easy-to-use HIPAA-compliant email marketing solution for healthcare with advanced segmentation and automation.
Secure Text – Secure access to patient portals and digital platforms via SMS from any device – no application required.
Secure Forms – HIPAA-compliant data collection, including PHI, from patients and customers for improved workflows and business intelligence.

All LuxSci products are HIPAA-compliant and are anchored in the company’s highly flexible and automated SecureLine^TMencryption technology. LuxSci’s SecureLine^TM technology enables you to set different levels of security based on the needs and goals of your targets, and your business. This includes enabling the right level of security for your HIPPA-compliant communications – and all your communications. The best part: SecureLine^TM encryption technology is automated, so your users do not need to take any action to ensure all your communications are secured.

“Personalized communications are more likely to engage patients and customers, leading to better care, improved adherence to treatment plans, more purchases, higher satisfaction rates, and ultimately, improved health outcomes,” said Mark Leonard, CEO at LuxSci. “Our new website and branding underscores our ongoing commitment to empower healthcare organizations with best-in-class security and encryption, stellar customer support, and the power to connect with their patients and customers over the communication channel of their choice.”

Whether you’re a customer, partner, or healthcare professional on the lookout for your next HIPAA-compliant, secure healthcare communications solution, check out the new LuxSci website today. See how personalized healthcare engagement can impact your patients, your customers – and your business.

Visit the new LuxSci.com today!

If you’d like to talk, connect with us here.

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LuxSci High Email Deliverability Best Practices Paper

What you’ll learn:

Your Email Platform Is Becoming Critical Healthcare Infrastructure

July 1, 2026
Pete Wermter

Most healthcare organizations view email as a utility, a necessary tool for sending messages between staff, communicating with patients, sending out newsletters, connecting workflows, and so on. Historically, IT teams focused on keeping it running, security teams worried about phishing, and compliance teams made sure sensitive emails were encrypted.

Today, however, that view is rapidly becoming outdated.

Email has evolved into one of healthcare’s most critical digital infrastructure components, and also one of it’s biggest security threats. It’s a core channel for patient engagement, care coordination, revenue cycle operations, digital marketing, remote monitoring, and increasingly, AI-powered communications. The organizations that recognize this shift are building communications platforms designed for security, performance, automation, and growth. With the new HIPAA Security Rule requiring email encryption on the horizon, those companies that don’t may find themselves constrained by systems that were never intended to support modern healthcare.

Email Is No Longer Just a Messaging Tool

Healthcare organizations now depend on email to support dozens of mission-critical workflows every day.

Patients receive appointment reminders, registration instructions, imaging results, billing notifications, Explanation of Benefits (EOBs), prescription updates, preventive care reminders, patient education, and post-discharge follow-up. Marketing teams deliver personalized wellness campaigns and service line promotions. Clinical systems generate transactional notifications. Revenue cycle teams rely on secure digital communications to accelerate payments and reduce paper costs.

For many organizations, mission-critical patient communications flow through email every month.

When viewed collectively, email is more than a simple communications channel. It has become operational infrastructure with high levels of security needed and increasing compliance requirements.

The Stakes Continue to Rise

As healthcare becomes more digital, every communication carries greater business and clinical importance.

A delayed billing email may postpone payment. A failed appointment reminder can increase no-show rates. An undelivered care management message may impact patient outcomes. A misconfigured security policy can expose protected health information (PHI). Poor deliverability can undermine expensive patient engagement initiatives before they ever reach the inbox.

These are no longer isolated IT issues. Email can affect revenue, patient satisfaction, operational efficiency, compliance, and organizational reputation.

Today’s healthcare leaders require email infrastructure to provide the same reliability and visibility they demand from electronic health records, identity management systems, and other core infrastructure.

AI Is Raising the Bar Even Higher

There’s little doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) promises to transform patient communications.

Healthcare organizations everywhere are exploring AI-generated patient education, personalized outreach, intelligent scheduling, multilingual communications, and automated follow-up programs.

But AI also increases the importance of the underlying communications infrastructure.

Generating more personalized emails means little if organizations cannot:

Automatically protect PHI.
Apply consistent security policies.
Maintain complete audit trails.
Deliver messages reliably.
Integrate with EHRs, RCM and CRM platforms, and customer data platforms.
Demonstrate compliance during an audits.

In many ways, AI amplifies both the opportunities and the risks. Your email platform can help determine whether AI initiatives succeed or create new compliance and operational challenges.

Infrastructure Matters More Than Features

Healthcare buyers have traditionally evaluated email platforms based on individual features such as encryption, spam filtering, or secure portals.

Those capabilities remain important, but they no longer tell the whole story.

Today’s healthcare organizations should be evaluating communications platforms the same way they evaluate any mission-critical infrastructure.

Questions increasingly include:

Can it support both transactional and marketing communications?
Does it automatically enforce security policies without relying on user decisions?
Can it integrate with EHRs, CRM systems, CDPs, and business applications?
Will it scale during peak communication periods?
Does it provide detailed audit logging and reporting?
Can it adapt as regulatory expectations evolve?
Does it maintain high deliverability at enterprise scale?
Does it support single-tenant dedicated infrastructure for high performance and increased security?

These infrastructure characteristics often determine long-term success far more than any single feature comparison.

Email and the Future Of Secure Healthcare Communications

Healthcare is steadily moving toward a world where nearly every patient interaction is digital, personalized, and data-driven.

Healthcare leaders often ask whether they need a more secure email solution. That may be the wrong question.

The better question is whether their communications infrastructure is ready for where healthcare is headed over the next decade.

If you want talk about the future of your healthcare email infrastructure, reach out today and schedule a 30-minute assessment call with our experts.

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The HIPAA Security Rule Missed Its May Deadline — Here’s What We Know

June 9, 2026
Pete Wermter

The proposed HIPAA Security Rule update has become one of the most closely watched healthcare compliance developments in recent years. Designed to strengthen cybersecurity protections for electronic protected health information (ePHI), the proposal could significantly reshape how healthcare organizations approach risk management, ePHI encryption, and mandatory email encryption requirements.

A final rule was expected as early as May 2026. However, that deadline has now passed without publication from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR).

So, what happens next—and what should healthcare IT directors, CISOs, and compliance officers do now?

Where Things Stand Today

The HIPAA Security Rule Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) was published on January 6, 2025, with the goal of strengthening cybersecurity protections for ePHI in response to escalating ransomware attacks, healthcare breaches, and growing concerns about cyber resilience across the healthcare sector.

The proposal generated thousands of public comments from healthcare providers, payers, business associates, technology vendors, and industry groups. OCR has spent much of the past year reviewing this feedback and evaluating the operational and financial impact of the proposed changes.

Although the Spring Unified Regulatory Agenda identified May 2026 as a target date for a final rule, that milestone came and went without publication. As of June 2026, the proposed HIPAA Security Rule update remains under review.

While some organizations may be tempted to take a wait-and-see approach, the missed deadline should not be interpreted as a signal that the initiative has stalled. If anything, the proposal offers valuable insight into the future direction of healthcare cybersecurity regulation.

The Growing Focus on Mandatory Email Encryption

One of the most discussed aspects of the proposed HIPAA Security Rule update is encryption.

Under the current HIPAA Security Rule, encryption is generally classified as an “addressable” implementation specification. Organizations can choose alternative safeguards if they document and justify their decisions through a risk analysis process.

The proposed changes would significantly reduce that flexibility. Instead, many security safeguards, including encryption controls, would become more prescriptive and difficult to avoid.

While the final language has not yet been released, healthcare organizations should pay close attention to the proposal’s clear message: protecting ePHI through encryption is increasingly viewed as a baseline cybersecurity requirement.

This is particularly important for email communications.

Email remains one of the most widely used communication channels in healthcare, supporting everything from patient engagement and care coordination to billing, scheduling, and marketing communications. As regulators continue to focus on reducing data breach risks, mandatory email encryption is emerging as a likely area of increased scrutiny.

What Healthcare Organizations Should Do Now

The current delay creates an opportunity, not a reason to postpone action.

Healthcare organizations can begin preparing for likely requirements today by evaluating the security controls highlighted throughout the proposed rule.

Key areas to review include:

Encryption of ePHI across systems and communications channels
Comprehensive asset inventories and ePHI data mapping
Enhanced risk analysis and risk management processes
Multifactor authentication (MFA)
Vulnerability scanning and penetration testing
Incident response planning and testing
Backup and recovery procedures
Email security and secure email encryption practices

Organizations that proactively strengthen these areas now will be better prepared regardless of the final rule’s implementation timeline.

Why Secure Email Encryption Should Be a Priority

For many healthcare organizations, email remains one of the largest compliance and security risks.

Human error, misdirected messages, phishing attacks, and inconsistent encryption practices continue to contribute to breaches involving protected health information. As a result, secure email encryption is increasingly becoming a foundational component of healthcare cybersecurity strategies.

Organizations that rely on manual encryption processes or employee judgment alone may find it difficult to meet evolving regulatory expectations.

Instead, healthcare organizations should look for solutions that automate encryption decisions, reduce user error, and provide flexibility based on the sensitivity of the communication.

At LuxSci, we have long believed that security and usability must work together. We are 100% focused on secure healthcare communications, helping healthcare providers, payers, and suppliers protect sensitive data while improving patient and customer engagement. Our proven secure email solutions, used by leading companies including Athenahealth, 1-800 Contacts, and Hinge Health, help organizations protect ePHI with automated encryption capabilities that support both compliance and operational efficiency. Our unique SecureLine encryption technology enables organizations to apply the appropriate level of protection while maintaining a seamless experience for patients, customers, and staff.

For organizations already using Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, LuxSci Secure Email Gateway can add HIPAA-compliant email security and encryption without requiring users to change their existing workflows. This approach helps reduce risk, while preserving productivity and user adoption.

The Bottom Line

The HIPAA Security Rule final rule may have missed its anticipated May deadline, but the cybersecurity challenges driving the proposal remain very real.

The OCR is still expected to make the rule change, which could require mandatory encryption of ePHI by early 2027.

The time to prepare is now!

Healthcare organizations should view the proposed HIPAA Security Rule update as an advance warning of where regulatory expectations are heading. Stronger cybersecurity controls, enhanced risk management, ePHI encryption, and mandatory email encryption requirements are all likely to remain central themes in future compliance efforts.

The organizations that begin preparing now will not only be better positioned for future regulatory changes, but will also strengthen their ability to protect patient data, reduce risk, and build trust in an increasingly challenging threat landscape.

At LuxSci, we’re proud to support the healthcare industry’s ongoing digital transformation through secure healthcare communications. Our HIPAA-compliant solutions for secure email, email marketing, and forms empower organizations to safely use and protect PHI, while delivering better patient experiences and outcomes.

Ready to strengthen your healthcare cybersecurity strategy?

Learn more about LuxSci and our complete suite of HIPAA compliant email and marketing solutions, or schedule a consultation with one of our healthcare communication experts today.

LuxSci Awarded 20 Badges in the G2 Summer 2026 Reports

May 28, 2026
Pete Wermter

We’re excited to announce that LuxSci has again been recognized by G2 with 20 badges in its just-released Summer 2026 Reports, highlighting our continued leadership in secure healthcare communications and HIPAA compliant email solutions.

The new LuxSci G2 recognitions span several categories, including:

Best Estimated ROI
Best Support
High Performer
Leader

These latest LuxSci G2 awards reflect what matters most to our customers: delivering secure, HIPAA compliant healthcare communications backed by responsive support and measurable business results.

As one of the most trusted providers of HIPAA compliant email, marketing, and forms solutions, we’re proud to see our commitment recognized across multiple product categories and customer satisfaction metrics.

Recognition Built on Customer Experience

LuxSci’s G2 rankings are based on verified customer feedback and real-world user experiences, making these badges especially meaningful to our team.

This year’s Summer Reports recognized LuxSci for consistently delivering value to healthcare organizations looking to securely engage patients and customers while maintaining compliance with HIPAA requirements.

Among the highlights, the LuxSci G2 recognition includes:

Best Estimated ROI, reflecting the measurable value customers achieve through secure healthcare communications and personalization
Best Support, reinforcing LuxSci’s long-standing reputation for responsive, knowledgeable customer service
High Performer badges across multiple categories for customer satisfaction and product performance
Leader recognition for delivering secure, scalable communications solutions trusted by healthcare organizations

At LuxSci, we believe secure communications should also drive better engagement, stronger outcomes and operational efficiency. These recognitions reinforce our focus on helping healthcare providers, payers and suppliers personalize communications while protecting sensitive patient data.

Supporting the Future of Personalized Healthcare Engagement

LuxSci’s secure healthcare communication and patient engagement solutions empower organizations to safely communicate with patients and customers through:

HIPAA-compliant high volume email
Secure email marketing
Secure forms and data collection
Flexible encryption with SecureLine technology

Our solutions are designed to help healthcare organizations improve engagement, streamline workflows and personalize the healthcare journey while maintaining the highest standards of security and compliance.

These latest LuxSci G2 recognitions also build on LuxSci’s broader reputation for security, performance and customer success. Security and trust remain foundational to everything we do, alongside our commitment to delivering smart, responsive support for our customers.

Thank You to Our Customers

We’re grateful to our customers for their continued trust, collaboration and feedback. Their reviews and insights help shape our products and drive ongoing innovation across the LuxSci product set.

To learn more about LuxSci’s secure healthcare communications solutions, contact our team to schedule a secure email assessment or demo.

Connect with us today!

Is OCR Already Enforcing Email Encryption Under the New HIPAA Security Rule?

May 12, 2026
Pete Wermter

Healthcare organizations waiting for the final HIPAA Security Rule updates before improving email encryption and security may already be behind.

While the proposed changes to the HIPAA Security Rule are expected to be finalized in May, the direction from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is becoming increasingly clear. Across investigations, settlements, and enforcement actions, OCR continues emphasizing stronger technical safeguards, encryption, documented security programs, multi-factor authentication (MFA), risk analysis, and proactive cybersecurity operations.

For healthcare organizations, one area stands directly in the middle of all of these priorities: email.

Email remains a primary communication channel in healthcare — and one of the industry’s largest security vulnerabilities. From unauthorized PHI exposure to phishing attacks and ransomware delivery to account compromise, email continues to be at the center of healthcare cybersecurity incidents.

So, are the proposed HIPAA Security Rule changes hypothetical future guidance or a preview of OCR’s future enforcement expectations?

For healthcare email security, the implications are significant.

Email = Healthcare Cybersecurity Risk

Healthcare organizations rely on email for critical communications and healthcare workflows, including:

Patient communications
Care coordination
Claims and billing notifications
Marketing and engagement
Internal collaboration
Third-party vendor communications
Delivery of sensitive PHI

At the same time, attackers continue targeting email systems because they remain one of the easiest entry points into healthcare environments.

Insecure email workflows create unnecessary exposure of protected health information. Phishing campaigns are becoming more sophisticated. Credential theft attacks are bypassing traditional MFA methods. And business email compromise (BEC) attacks continue rising.

Recent OCR enforcement actions increasingly reflect these realities.

Organizations are being evaluated not simply on whether a breach occurred, but whether they implemented reasonable safeguards beforehand, including encryption, authentication controls, monitoring, access management, and documented risk mitigation processes.

For email systems specifically, that means healthcare organizations should expect increased scrutiny around:

Email encryption enforcement
MFA deployment
Audit logging and retention
Conditional access policies
Vendor security controls
Secure email delivery best practices
Segmentation and infrastructure isolation
Ongoing patch and vulnerability management

In many ways, email infrastructure is becoming a visible test of an organization’s overall cybersecurity posture.

Email Encryption Is Moving From Addressable to Required

Historically, healthcare organizations often interpreted HIPAA email encryption requirements with flexibility because encryption was technically categorized as an “addressable” safeguard under the Security Rule. But, OCR enforcement and broader cybersecurity realities are changing that interpretation rapidly.

Today, failing to encrypt sensitive healthcare communications increasingly creates both security and regulatory risk. The proposed Security Rule updates place even greater emphasis on encryption and technical safeguards. At the same time, OCR investigations continue examining whether organizations properly protected PHI in transit and at rest.

For healthcare email specifically, this creates several growing expectations:

Email encryption should be automated wherever possible
Human error should not determine whether PHI is protected
Organizations should maintain documented encryption policies
Secure delivery methods should adapt dynamically to recipient capabilities
Audit trails should demonstrate how messages were secured

At LuxSci, we have long believed that encryption should operate as a strategic layer of healthcare communications infrastructure, not as a manual user decision.

Our SecureLine email encryption technology automatically applies appropriate encryption methods based on organizational policies and delivery requirements, helping reduce the risks associated with human error while maintaining usability, deliverability and compliance. As enforcement expectations rise, this type of automated security enforcement is becoming increasingly important.

Traditional MFA May No Longer Be Enough

Another major shift emerging from both OCR enforcement trends and the proposed rule updates is the growing importance of stronger authentication models.

Healthcare organizations have historically viewed MFA deployment as sufficient protection. But attackers have adapted quickly.

MFA bypass attacks, token theft, session hijacking, and consent phishing campaigns are increasingly targeting healthcare users. As a result, regulators and cybersecurity experts are placing greater emphasis on phishing-resistant authentication approaches and contextual access controls.

For email environments, organizations should increasingly evaluate:

Whether MFA methods are resistant to phishing attacks
Conditional access policies based on device, location, and behavior
Account monitoring and anomaly detection
Administrative access protections
Session management controls
Logging and authentication auditing

The broader message is clear: healthcare organizations need authentication strategies designed for today’s threat landscape, not yesterday’s compliance checklist.

OCR Wants Proof, Not Just Policies

One of the clearest trends emerging from recent OCR activity is the increasing importance of documentation and operational evidence. Healthcare organizations must increasingly demonstrate not only that safeguards exist, but that they are consistently enforced, monitored, tested, and maintained over time.

For email systems, organizations should be prepared to demonstrate:

Email encryption policies
MFA enforcement records
Audit logs and message tracking
Vendor security documentation
Risk assessments involving email infrastructure
Patch management procedures
Employee security awareness training
Incident response procedures for email-based threats

This represents a broader shift in healthcare cybersecurity expectations.

The question is no longer: “Do you have email security controls?”

The question is increasingly: “Can you prove they are operationally effective?”

Healthcare Organizations Need a New Email Security Strategy

The healthcare industry is entering a new phase of cybersecurity enforcement.

OCR’s direction is becoming increasingly clear: organizations are expected to proactively secure systems handling PHI using modern, documented, and continuously maintained safeguards. For email security specifically, that means organizations should stop treating encryption, MFA, and secure communications as optional compliance requirements. Instead, they should view secure email infrastructure as a strategic component of enterprise cybersecurity and patient trust.

At LuxSci, we help healthcare organizations modernize secure communications with HIPAA compliant email infrastructure designed specifically for healthcare environments, including flexible encryption, secure delivery, auditability, high deliverability, access controls, and dedicated infrastructure options.

The proposed HIPAA Security Rule updates may not yet be final. But, OCR is already signaling where healthcare cybersecurity enforcement is headed next. For organizations relying on email to communicate with patients, members, customers, and partners, the time to examine your secure email infrastructure is now.

Connect with our experts to learn more using the form at the top of this page!

What Are the Implications of the Proposed Changes to the HIPAA Security Rule?

March 14, 2025
Pete Wermter

With the recent announcement of proposed changes to the HIPAA Security Rule, by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), healthcare providers, payers, suppliers, and organizations of all sizes will have to tighten up their cybersecurity practices. In some cases, considerably.

However, with the announcement being so recent (and there not even yet being a clear timeline for when companies will have to implement the changes), it’s all too easy for organizations to view the proposed amendments as a challenge that’s far off in the future.

However, even at this early stage, the proposed changes to the Security Rule require careful consideration and important conversations. Soon, healthcare companies will have to implement or improve a series of cybersecurity controls designed to better safeguard electronic protected health information (ePHI).

In light of this, in this post, we’ll discuss some of the most important practical considerations that healthcare organizations will have to contend with to maintain HIPAA compliance when the proposed changes to the Security Rule go through.

What are the Key Proposed Changes to the HIPAA Security Rule?

First, a refresher on what the proposed changes to the Security Rule are:

More Comprehensive Risk Management: healthcare organizations must conduct more frequent risk assessments to identify, categorize, and mitigate threats to sensitive patient data.
Stricter Documentation and Evidence Retention Policies: similarly, stronger documentation and record-keeping practices to ensure organizations can demonstrate compliance with security requirements.

This includes:

Maintaining detailed records of how they assess threats and implement safeguard security controls (e.g., encryption policies, access controls, etc).
Retaining detailed audit logs of system access, data modifications, and security events, as well as reports from security solutions, such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems all must be securely stored, retained for a defined period, and made available for audits and compliance reviews.
By the same token, the proposed updates to the Security Rule may extend how long healthcare organizations must retain logs and other security documentation, allowing auditors to review historical compliance efforts in the event of an investigation.

Mandatory Encryption for All ePHI Transmission: healthcare companies will require end-to-end encryption for emails, messages, and data transfers involving ePHI. Like today, this means that patient data must be encrypted in transit, i.e., from one place to another (when collected in a secure form, sent in an email, etc.), and in storage, i.e., where it will reside.
Stronger User Authentication and Identity Verification Requirements: healthcare providers must implement stronger identity access management IAM safeguards, such as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), for employees with access to patient data.
Tighter Third-Party Security Controls: stricter security controls for business associates who have access to the healthcare company’s ePHI. One of the proposed changes to the HIPAA Security Rule is that vendor security audits will be mandatory instead of optional.
Updated Incident Response (IR) and Data Breach Reporting Rules: mandating stricter breach notification timelines for healthcare entities and their business associates, with them being obligated to inform parties affected by a security breach as soon as possible.

What Are The Practical Implications for Healthcare Companies?

So, what will healthcare companies have to do to comply with HIPAA regulations when the proposed changes to the Security Rule go through? Let’s look at the main practical considerations.

Cybersecurity Solution Deployment and Infrastructure Upgrades

Many healthcare companies will have to install (and subsequently, maintain) new IT infrastructure and deploy new cybersecurity tools to strengthen their authentication safeguards (e.g., MFA, Zero Trust, etc.) to meet new HIPAA’s heightened cybersecurity standards.

Expanded Vendor and Third-Party Management

As well as having to deploy new cybersecurity solutions, such as HIPAA compliant email services and continuous monitoring tools, healthcare organizations will have to be more diligent in their oversight of their third-party vendors.

Stricter Auditing and Documentation Requirements

In having to provide more details of their risk management practices and maintain real-time logs, healthcare organizations will have to develop processes, policies, and supporting documentation.

Staff Training

Healthcare companies will have to train their staff on the updates of the Security Rule, their implications, how to use the new applications and hardware deployed to harden their security posture, etc.

Increased Management and Administrative Burden

Dealing with proposed changes to the Security Rule is going to require all hands on deck.

Managers and stakeholders are going to make several important strategic decisions; procurement and product managers are going to have to research and purchase new solutions; IT will have to deploy the solutions; and everyone will need to learn how to use them.

With all this in mind, more will be required from everyone within your organization. Employees will be taken away from their work, which could affect the quality of the service provided to patients and customers.

That’s why it’s crucial to be prepared…

How Can You Prepare For the Proposed Changes to the Security Rule?

Conduct risk assessments: pinpoint vulnerabilities within your IT network and the ePHI contained therein. You should conduct risk assessments annually at the very least – or you upgrade your IT infrastructure. In light of the proposed amendments to the Security Rule, conducting a risk assessment to identify the security gaps in your network against the proposed rule changes is essential.
Evaluate your existing email and communication platforms: to accommodate the upcoming changes to the Security Rule, many healthcare companies will need to upgrade to HIPAA compliant email communication solutions, as well as encrypted databases for securely storing ePHI at rest. Deploying an email services solution designed for the healthcare industry from a HIPAA compliant email provider like LuxSci, best ensures compliance with encryption and the other new requirements of the Security Rule.
Improve your organization’s incident response planning and documentation processes: develop all the required documentation to track the movement of patient data, and refine your processes for handling security events. This also encompasses training your staff on your new security policies and procedures.
Improve your organization’s cybersecurity posture: by implementing end-to-end encryption, network segmentation, zero-trust security infrastructure, data loss protection (DLP) protocols, and other measures that will better protect patient data.
Perform vendor due diligence: ensure your third-party service providers meet HIPAA compliance standards and that you have a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) in place with each vendor that can access your ePHI.

How Luxsci Can Help You Navigate the Proposed Changes to the HIPAA Security Rule

With more than 20 years of experience in delivering best-in-class secure HIPAA compliant marketing solutions for the healthcare industry, LuxSci is a trusted partner for healthcare organizations looking to secure their email and digital communications in line with regulatory standards and the industry’s highest security standards.

LuxSci’s suite of HIPAA-compliant solutions includes:

Secure Email: HIPAA compliant email solutions executing highly scalable email campaigns that include PHI – send millions of emails per month.
Secure Forms: Securely and efficiently collect and store ePHI without compromising security or compliance – for onboarding new patients and customers and gathering intelligence for personalization.
Secure Marketing – proactively reach your patients and customers with HIPAA compliant email marketing campaigns for increased engagement, lead generation and sales.
Secure Text Messaging – enable access to ePHI and other sensitive information directly to mobile devices via regular SMS text messages.

Interested in discovering more about LuxSci can help you get a head start on upgrading your cybersecurity stance to ensure future HIPAA compliance? Contact us today!

Is SendGrid HIPAA-Compliant?

January 23, 2025
LuxSci

Twilio’s SendGrid is a cloud-based email marketing platform that contains the tools and resources that organizations need to carry out bulk email marketing campaigns. By providing companies with a robust, scalable email infrastructure, SendGrid reduces the technical and management overhead from delivering emails at scale.

SendGrid’s capabilities and benefits are undeniable – and are the reason why the popular platform is the email delivery service of choice for prominent companies like Spotify and Airbnb. For healthcare organizations, however, while reliability and scalability are essential for large-scale patient engagement campaigns and communications, security is another crucial concern. More specifically, for a healthcare company to send electronic protected health information (ePHI) through an email services platform, the service must be HIPAA-compliant.

This then begs the question, is SendGrid a HIPAA compliant email service? Subsequently, can companies use SendGrid to transmit ePHI?

The short answer is no, they are not. Let’s take a closer look…

Is SendGrid HIPAA-Compliant?

SendGrid is not a HIPAA-compliant email service. There are two key reasons for this:

It lacks sufficient encryption measures
SendGrid does not sign business associate agreements (BAAs)

Let’s discuss each reason in greater detail.

Basic Encryption

SendGrid only offers the basic encryption provided by the Simple Mail Transmission Protocol (SMTP), i.e., the standard mechanism used to transmit emails.

Unfortunately, this level of encryption leaves ePHI vulnerable to cyber threats such as business email compromise (BEC) attacks, ransomware, and device loss or theft. In contrast, for an email services platform to be HIPPA-compliant, it must protect ePHI in transit and at rest, using security measures like Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption and end-to-end encryption.

Refreshingly, SendGrid is clear and upfront about this (in contrast to, Mailchimp, for example, who make you dig a little deeper to determine their non-compliance) – as Twilio’s documentation explicitly says that they do not offer HIPAA-compliant data transmission. Stating, “SendGrid does not natively support HIPAA-compliant data transmission. We do not offer any encryption or security measures surrounding message transmission beyond those included in the SMTP RFC, which was not designed with HIPAA compliancy in mind.”

In short, SendGrid wasn’t designed to withstand the increased cyber risk that accompanies handling ePHI and isn’t HIPPA-compliant as a result.

No Business Associate Agreement

Additionally, in addition to lower levels of encryption, SendGrid does not sign the business associate agreements (BAA) required to be HIPPA-compliant.

A business associate agreement (BAA) is a written contract between a covered entity (your company) and a business associate (a service provider, such as an email services or email marketing platform) that’s an essential requirement of HIPAA compliance. A BAA details how two organizations can share data and the legal responsibilities of each party.

This is again stated on Twilio’s website that says, “Twilio SendGrid does not intend uses of the Service to create obligations under The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (“GLBA”) or similar laws and makes no representations that the Service satisfies the requirements of such laws. If You are (or become) a Covered Entity or Business Associate (as defined in HIPAA) or a Financial Institution (as defined in GLBA), You agree not to use the Service for any purpose or in any manner involving Protected Health Information (as defined in HIPAA) or Nonpublic Personal Information (as defined in GLBA).”

Here, Twilio is explicitly telling you that SendGrid does not fit the requirements of HIPPA-compliant and that you should not use their service to transmit ePHI.

HIPAA-Compliant Alternatives to SendGrid

While healthcare companies cannot rely on popular options like SendGrid if they want to utilize ePHI in their patient outreach campaigns, fortunately, there are HIPAA-compliant email platforms that are specifically designed for organizations that have to comply with the regulations.

As the most experienced HIPAA-compliant email provider, LuxSci specializes in providing secure and scalable HIPAA-compliant services for companies aiming to send hundreds of thousands – or millions – of emails. In light of this, we place security, regulatory and practical considerations front and center when building our solutions – from their early planning stages until final deployment.

Our approach results in tailor-made tools and services like HIPAA-compliant bulk email, secure text and secure marketing. This includes flexible encryption functionality, such as TLS, end-to-end, or role-based access encryption, that enable healthcare organizations to align their security with the sensitivity of the transmitted and their specific business requirements – all while remaining HIPAA compliant.

To discover how LuxSci and SendGrid stack up against each other, as well as with other HIPAA-compliant, general purpose and marketing email providers on the market, including Virtru and Mailchimp, take a look at our Vendor Comparison Guide. The guide takes a deep dive on 12 email delivery platforms, offering insights on what to consider when selecting a provider – and how to choose the vender best suited to meet your secure healthcare communications needs.

Get your copy here, and reach out to us with any questions.

LuxSci Expands Executive Team to Scale Enterprise Growth and Operations

September 17, 2024
LuxSci

LuxSci, a leading provider of secure, HIPAA-compliant communications software, today announced new executive appointments as part of its strategy to drive future growth and further expansion into the enterprise market. Experienced B2B software executives Robert Sullebarger and Geneviève du Lac have joined the company as Head of Sales and Head of Finance, respectively – reporting to recently appointed CEO Mark Leonard. In addition, David Hillman has joined the company as Director of Engineering, reporting to Erik Kangas, Chief Technology Officer.

“LuxSci has proven its capabilities with some of the largest, most forward-looking companies in healthcare, including patient engagement platform, EHR systems, and payment providers, as well as healthcare retail and in-home care providers,” said Leonard. “Bob, Geneviève and David all bring deep leadership experience combined with a willingness to be hands-on in helping us optimize our operations and execute quickly for our customers and partners.”

Proven Sales Leader and Trusted Advisor

Bob’s career has focused on enterprise software sales and customer acquisition across both established and emerging technologies, including security & compliance, conversational AI and virtual assistant platforms, machine learning, and telecom & networking. Bob brings LuxSci more than two decades of experience in sales, marketing, and product management roles, serving as both a trusted business advisor and a technology expert for customers and partners. Most recently, he led the sales teams for AI solution providers ModuleQ and Interactions LLC, where he helped the company grow from $10 million to more than $100 million in annual revenue. He has also held leadership positions at contact center analytics provider CallMiner, and data security provider Vericept Corporation.

“LuxSci is the gold standard for HIPAA-compliant email and secure healthcare communications with a leadership position in the market,” said Sullebarger. “With healthcare portal adoption maxing out, we have a real opportunity to improve patient engagement and outcomes by opening up the email, SMS and marketing channels to bring more people into today’s healthcare conversation.”

Experienced CFO and Finance Leader

Geneviève joins LuxSci with more than 15 years of experience in CFO and Finance leadership roles. This includes building world-class Finance teams and organizations in the cybersecurity, consumer, and services industries at companies including Cypress Security, Astro Gaming and Wine Country Connect. Throughout her career Geneviève has established a proven track record of success in Finance leadership for ‘scale-up’ businesses, with focus on SaaS companies. Geneviève also brings LuxSci deep experience in implementing systems & processes aimed at building operational scalability, which will be a key part of her responsibilities at the company.

“I’m excited to be joining LuxSci as we build it into a world-class organization,” said Du Lac. “The company has achieved tremendous success to date, and we’re positioned better than ever to keep growing – and to help transform the healthcare industry with secure communications.”

Full Stack Software Architect and Data Scientist

David joins LuxSci with more than 20 years of experience across the entire spectrum of application development, data analysis and automated systems. This includes architect, engineer, developer, and consultant roles at innovative companies, such as Kapital Trading, Gogo, Monster, Livetext, and AT&T Bell Labs. David specializes in designing and building data-intensive applications that analyze large datasets and extract intelligence, as well as developing tools to empower users to interact with those resources. At LuxSci, David will play a key role in the future development of LuxSci technology, helping guide the company’s product direction and roadmap moving forward.

“I’m looking forward to collaborating with the outstanding team already in place at LuxSci and continuing to enhance our products to make our customers’ healthcare communications and operations both smoother and safer,” said Hillman.

In other recent news, LuxSci continues to innovate in secure healthcare communications, recently rolling out new email reporting capabilities and achieving best-in-class performance for email security.

LuxSci has been at the forefront of HIPAA-compliant communications since its inception, offering a full suite of products for secure email, marketing, text and forms. Today, LuxSci is used by nearly 2,000 customers for HIPAA-compliant communications across the healthcare industry, including athenaHealth, 1800 Contacts, Delta Dental, Lucerna Health, Hinge Health, and Rotech Healthcare.

If you’d like to learn more about how LuxSci can help you with secure healthcare communications, reach out to us today for a meeting or demo!

How Can I Prove an Email was Sent to Me?

January 16, 2024
LuxSci

Almost everyone has been in this situation: someone claims to have sent you an email message, but you look in your inbox and don’t see it. As far as you know, you never got it. How can you prove an email was sent?

How to Prove That an Email was Sent

So, where do you start? As the purported recipient of an email message, the easiest way to prove that a message was sent to you is to have a copy of that message. It could be:

In your inbox or another email folder
A copy in your permanent email archives

Sometimes, missing emails are caused by simple user errors. The obvious place to start the search is in your inbox and email folders. It’s also a good idea to check your email filtering and archival services. It’s possible that your email filtering system accidentally flagged the message as spam or sent it to quarantine. If it’s not there, check your email archival system. That should capture a copy of all sent and received messages.

Hopefully, that will solve the issue. If it doesn’t, it’s worth stepping back to understand where the email could have gone and where you should turn next to solve the problem.

What happened to the email?

In reality, there are only a few things that could have happened:

The recipient never sent the message.
The recipient did send the message, but it did not reach you.
The message did make it to you, but it was accidentally or inadvertently deleted (or overlooked).

Let’s begin with what you can check and investigate. Start your search soon. The more time that elapses, the less evidence you may have, as logs and backups get deleted over time.

Did the recipient actually send the message?

First, you should know that the sender could have put tracking on the message so that they were informed if you opened or read it (even if you are unaware of the tracking). In such cases, the sender can disprove false claims of “I didn’t get it!” If you are concerned about an email being ignored, use read recipients or tracking pixels to confirm email delivery.

If you never saw the message, do what we discussed above and start searching your email folders for it. It could have been accidentally moved to the wrong folder or sent to the Trash folder. If you have a folder that keeps copies of all inbound emails (like LuxSci’s “BACKUP” folder), check there too. Check your spam folder and spam-filtering system. Your spam-filtering system may also have logs that you can search for evidence of this message passing through it. Finally, check any custom email filters you may have set up with your email service provider or in your email programs. If you have filters that auto-delete or auto-reject some messages, see if that may have happened to the message in question.

The searches above are straightforward; you can do many of them yourself. Often, they will yield evidence of the missing message or explain why you might not have received it.

Maybe the email was sent but didn’t make it to you?

Email messages leave a trail as they travel from the sender to the recipient. This trail is visible in the “Received” email headers of the message (if you have it) and in the server logs at the sender’s email provider and your email provider. If you know some aspects of the message in question (i.e., the subject, sender, recipient, and date/time sent), you can ask your email service provider to search their logs to see if there is any evidence of such a message arriving in their systems. This will tell you if such a message reached your email provider. However, email providers can typically only search the most recent one to two weeks of logs. So, if the message in question was from a while ago, your email service provider may be unable to help you (or may charge you a lot of money to manually extract and search archived log files if they have them).

If your email provider has no record of the message or cannot search their logs, you (or the sender) can ask the same question of the sender’s email provider. If they can provide records of such an email being sent through their system, that will prove the email was sent.

The log file analysis provided by the email providers could also explain why you didn’t get the message. Your email address might have been spelled wrong, there could have been a server glitch or issue, etc. However, if the message was sent long ago, the chance of learning anything useful from the email provider is small. Also, if you use a commodity email provider such as AOL, Yahoo, Outlook, Gmail, etc., you may find it impossible to contact a technical support person and have them perform an accurate and helpful log search. Premium providers, like LuxSci, are more likely to support your requests.

The last thing you can do is have the sender review their sent email folders for a copy of that message. If they have it, that can indicate that they sent it and can reveal why you didn’t get it (i.e., wrong email address, content that would have triggered your filters, etc.). However, be wary. It is easy to forge a message in a sent email folder, so it should not be considered definitive proof that the message was sent. And, even so, just because the message was sent, it does not prove it ever made it to your email provider or inbox.

The recipient never actually sent the email message

If the sending event was recent, then the data from your email service provider can prove that the message did not reach you, but that doesn’t prove that it was not sent. The sender may claim that they do not have a record of sent messages and that their email provider will not do log searching, and that may also be true. At this point, you are stuck without a resolution.

While email is a reliable delivery system, there are many ways for messages not to make it to the intended recipient. Whether it was not sent or was sent and never arrived, the result is the same- no message for you. As a result, it’s best not to send legal notices or other important documents only by email. Using read receipts and other technologies when sending important messages can help increase confidence that an email was sent and received. Still, there is no foolproof way to guarantee email delivery.

How Do I Prove the Email Sender’s Identity?

A separate but related question is, how can I be sure the sender is who they say they are? Social engineering is rising, and cybercriminals can use technology to impersonate individuals and companies. If you are questioning whether the sender actually sent the message to your inbox (or if it is from a spammer or cybercriminal), it is necessary to perform a forensic analysis of the email headers (particularly the Received lines, DKIM signatures, etc.) and possibly get the sender’s email provider involved to corroborate the evidence. To learn more about how to conduct this analysis, please read: How Spammers and Hackers Can Send Forged Email.