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Reduce Risk with Set It and Forget It Email Encryption

Tuesday, February 7th, 2023

Leveraging PHI in your communications provides relevant, meaningful information to patients while significantly increasing positive health outcomes. LuxSci’s secure and HIPAA-compliant always-on email encryption streamlines the communications process and reduces risk. Use PHI safely and securely with set it and forget it email encryption technology.

The Email Encryption Landscape

There are many ways to enable encryption for messages that contain protected health information. The most common include data loss prevention technology and manual opt-in encryption.

First, data loss prevention uses software to scan message contents to look for keywords, phrases, or patterns that indicate the presence of sensitive or confidential information. Administrators must create detailed rules that instruct the DLP technology on what information is privileged and should be encrypted. While this is effective for some common keywords and patterns like social security numbers, a lot of health data does not fall neatly into pre-defined rules. DLP can quickly be rendered inadequate by misspellings, typos, or other human errors that fail to trigger the technology.

The next way that email messages are commonly encrypted is through human decision-making. The user switches a toggle or types a word like “encrypt” into the subject line or message to notify the system that the message should be secured. This form of opt-in encryption is hazardous because it relies on staff members making the right decisions around confidentiality and security. Even the best employees will make mistakes. How many times have you forgotten to include an attachment with an email message?

A Better Way: Set It and Forget It Email Encryption

At LuxSci, we recommend a different approach. Encrypting every email message automatically drastically reduces the risk of user error and ensures 100% message encryption. In industries like healthcare and finance, even one mistake could lead to a breach with severe financial penalties.

By encrypting all messages with a baseline of TLS encryption, organizations can meet their compliance requirements and provide a better user experience for recipients because portal logins are not required.

Set It

Setting up LuxSci’s Secure Connector takes less than one hour. Administrators can set it up globally, with no local installation or download required by staff members to connect. Once DNS and encryption settings are configured, employees can send secure emails immediately.

Administrators can choose the encryption configuration option that best fits their business processes. TLS is suitable for most communications, but sensitive data like health records, financial reports, or other confidential information can be sent to a secure portal for increased security. Administrators can create and manage encryption settings on an individual or group level to provide maximum flexibility. LuxSci’s encryption technology is highly configurable to meet any business need.

Forget It

Administrators don’t have to rely on employee decision-making when all messages are automatically encrypted. Employees do not need to be trained on when to enable encryption. It just happens automatically in the background, which increases security and gives you peace of mind.

It’s also easier for administrators to manage. There is no need to create detailed lists of rules to trigger encryption technology. Once you’ve selected your encryption preferences, all emails are sent that way. Minimal ongoing training or support is needed, and administrators can be confident that their messages are protected. In addition, users can verify that secure message delivery occurred with comprehensive analytics reports.

The Results: Improved Patient Engagement

TLS encryption is a game-changer because it is secure enough to meet compliance requirements and is user-friendly. TLS-encrypted messages appear just like regular, unencrypted emails in the recipient’s inbox, making them easy to read and respond to but without the risk of interception or eavesdropping. This is crucial for users who are not tech-savvy and helps to increase engagement with the message contents. If a user needs to take an extra step to log into a portal or create an account, they are more likely to drop off and not read the message.

Reducing friction in patient communications helps improve conversions and nudges patients into taking actions that will improve their health outcomes. Access to health care needs to be equitable, and that means making clinical communications seamless for users of all technical abilities.

Tags: always on encryption, automatic encrypion, dlp, email encryption, human error, patient engagement, phi, risk analysis, secure connector, set it and forget it
Posted in Email, LuxSci Library: HIPAA
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Infographic: Most Email Software Cannot Use PHI

Thursday, January 12th, 2023

Email Communication is Necessary- But Introduces Risk

When it comes to receiving communications from businesses, 93% of people say that email is their preferred communication channel. In the healthcare industry, organizations must take extra care to comply with HIPAA. Only some email marketing platforms can adequately protect PHI. If not properly secured, email can introduce significant risks to sensitive data. 72% of organizations report experiencing an email cyberattack.

As the definition of PHI is ever-expanding to include information like biomarkers, organizations need to adopt a more secure posture for their personal, transactional, and marketing email. Cybercriminals seek out personal data because it is highly valued on the dark web. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and policies preventing users from sending PHI insecurely are not enough.

Humans are prone to error and often make mistakes classifying PHI. Even DLP technology is not infallible- keywords can be misspelled, and PHI only sometimes fits cleanly into pre-determined filters. 40% of threats stem from internal actors. Many are not malicious, just mistakes! You must account for errors when humans are part of your security program.

So how can you prevent data leakage and ensure the security of sensitive data at rest and in transit? It’s simple when you choose the right solution. Resolve the tension between security risk and business engagement objectives by choosing a fully compliant email marketing solution.

infographic email phi (Click to Expand)

Two Requirements for Including PHI in Marketing Emails

Secure Application

HIPAA does not require at-rest encryption, though it is recommended to decrease risk and potential liability. When using email marketing platforms or customer relationship management systems that contain PHI, it’s essential to keep that information protected. You must ensure that all collected and stored protected health information is encrypted and can only be accessed and decrypted by people with the appropriate keys. This makes backups secure, protects data from being improperly accessed, and generally protects the data no matter what happens (unless the keys are stolen). Encryption is essential to protect private health data at rest in an application.

Transmission Encryption

If protected health information is transmitted outside of the database or application, encryption must also be used to protect the data in transmission. At a minimum, TLS encryption (with the appropriate ciphers) is secure enough to meet HIPAA guidelines. However, TLS alone may not be appropriate for your use cases. Non-compliant and quasi-compliant applications do not offer transmission encryption that is secure enough to comply with HIPAA. You should only send communications containing PHI if they are encrypted.

Types of Email Marketing Solutions

Non Compliant (1)

Many of the most popular email solutions on the market were not designed to protect the sensitive data of the healthcare industry. These vendors will not sign Business Associate Agreements and do not provide the storage or transmission encryption needed to meet HIPAA requirements. Healthcare organizations should only use these solutions if they do not send PHI- which may be impossible if you plan to email lists of patients with any information about their healthcare.

Quasi Compliant (2)

HIPAA does not require any specific technology to meet its requirements, which allows for flexibility, but also creates uncertainty. No central government organization certifies HIPAA compliance, and as a result, many organizations advertise themselves as “HIPAA-compliant” but don’t enable you to take full advantage of their functionality. We call this “Quasi compliance.”

Quasi-compliant solutions often provide a secure application and protect patient data at rest. However, they will not permit you to send emails or transmit PHI outside the database. This can seriously limit the usefulness of the solution. Take a real-life example: one healthcare organization purchased a CRM system and set it up, uploaded their contacts, and was ready to start using it, so they enabled the “HIPAA Compliance” toggle on the backend. They quickly found that much of the functionality was no longer available and wouldn’t allow them to email or log certain data types. The solution was almost useless for their patient engagement efforts.

Other applications will permit you to use the full functionality of the solution, but when you read the terms of the Business Associate Agreement, it is clear that you are not allowed to send PHI. If signed, your organization will be responsible for any breaches caused by sending PHI insecurely, not the vendor.

Full Compliance (4)

This is why it’s crucial to vet solutions carefully and not take shortcuts regarding HIPAA compliance. Any CRM, CDP, or email marketing solution must protect data at rest in a secure application and encrypt transmitted messages. Even more importantly, it shouldn’t take any extra training or require any extra steps to use in a compliant way.

At LuxSci, (3) we provide a secure application to manage your email campaigns that encrypts transmitted messages automatically. Our Secure Marketing solution is designed to meet the unique security needs of healthcare organizations. All email transmissions are encrypted automatically, and users can choose the right type of encryption (TLS, Portal Pickup) to meet their email use cases. Automatic encryption gives your security and compliance teams peace of mind that all messages are sent securely. Data is protected throughout the lifecycle and does not require employees to decide whether a message contains PHI. Healthcare marketers can fully use PHI to personalize and customize messaging to increase patient engagement and get better ROI on their marketing campaigns.

Tags: automatic encryption, data encryption, email encryption, email marketing, human error, infographic, phi, quasi compliance, secure application
Posted in Email Marketing, LuxSci Library: HIPAA
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