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What is a HIPAA Compliant Message?

What is a HIPAA Compliant Message

A HIPAA compliant message securely transmits protected health information while meeting the Security Rule requirements for confidentiality, integrity, and availability. These messages include proper encryption during transmission, verification of recipient identity, access controls, and audit logging capabilities. Healthcare organizations must implement appropriate protections and establish usage policies governing how staff communicate protected health information to maintain compliance with HIPAA regulations.

Requirements for Secure Messaging

A HIPAA compliant message must incorporate several protections to safeguard patient information. Encryption during transmission prevents unauthorized interception of message contents while traveling between sender and recipient. Authentication mechanisms verify the identity of both senders and recipients before allowing access to message contents. Access controls restrict message viewing to authorized individuals with legitimate need for the information. Audit logging creates records of message sending, receipt, and viewing activities with timestamps and user identification. Message integrity protections prevent undetected alterations during transmission or storage. Organizations must implement these safeguards across all platforms used for sending HIPAA compliant messages, including email systems, patient portals, and secure messaging applications.

Message Content Considerations

]The content within a HIPAA compliant message must follow several guidelines to maintain regulatory compliance. Messages should include only the minimum necessary information required for the intended purpose, avoiding excessive disclosure of patient details. Identifiable patient information must be clearly separated from general communication content for proper protection. Message subjects and headers should avoid revealing protected health information that might be visible in notification previews. Disclaimers typically appear at message ends stating confidentiality requirements and instructions for unintended recipients. Healthcare organizations develop content templates that help staff compose a HIPAA compliant message with appropriate structure and security notices. Proper content structuring ensures information remains protected throughout its communication lifecycle.

Acceptable Messaging Platforms

Healthcare organizations can send HIPAA compliant messages through various platforms that meet security requirements. Secure email systems with encryption and access controls provide one common method for protected communications. Patient portal messaging offers a controlled environment where both providers and patients access information through authenticated sessions. Secure text messaging applications designed for healthcare use encrypt communications between clinical staff members. Telehealth platforms include messaging components that maintain security during virtual visits. Fax transmissions to verified numbers remain acceptable for many healthcare communications when received by authorized recipients. Regardless of platform choice, organizations must verify that protections, Business Associate Agreements, and usage policies align with HIPAA requirements for their selected communication channels.

Patient Authorization Requirements

HIPAA compliant messages containing protected health information must adhere to patient authorization requirements. Communications for treatment, payment, and healthcare operations generally proceed without specific patient permission. Messages for other purposes often require documented patient authorization before sending. Patient preferences for communication methods should be recorded and respected for all messages. Some patients may authorize unencrypted communications after being informed of the risks, though organizations should document these preferences carefully. Authorization requirements apply regardless of the security measures implemented for message transmission. Healthcare organizations must train staff to recognize which communications require patient authorization and how to properly document these permissions.

HIPAA Compliant Messaging Documentation

Healthcare organizations must maintain documentation about their HIPAA compliant messaging practices. Policies should clearly define what constitutes appropriate message content and which communication channels may be used for different information types. Procedure documents need to outline steps for sending protected information through various platforms. Training records demonstrate that staff understand proper messaging protocols and security requirements. Technology configurations for messaging systems should be documented to demonstrate appropriate security settings. Audit logs from messaging platforms provide evidence of compliance with access and monitoring requirements. This documentation helps organizations demonstrate their compliance efforts during regulatory reviews or investigations of potential violations.

Messaging Security Breach Prevention

Preventing security breaches represents a crucial aspect of maintaining HIPAA compliant messaging systems. Staff education about phishing threats and social engineering helps prevent credential theft that could lead to unauthorized message access. Message recall capabilities allow addressing accidental disclosures before they become reportable breaches. Automatic lockout after failed login attempts prevents password guessing attacks against messaging accounts. Message expiration and automatic deletion policies reduce the risk window for stored communications. Regular security assessments identify potential vulnerabilities in messaging systems before they can be exploited. Healthcare organizations combine these preventive measures with monitoring systems that detect potential messaging security incidents early, allowing rapid response before patient information becomes compromised.

Picture of Erik Kangas

Erik Kangas

With 30 years engaged in to both academic research and software architecture, Erik Kangas is the founder and Chief Technology Officer of LuxSci, playing a core role in building the company into the market leader for HIPAA compliant, secure healthcare communications solutions that it is today. An international lecturer on messaging security, Erik also advises and consults on email technology strategies and best practices, secure architectures, and HIPAA compliance. Erik holds undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics from Case Western Reserve University, and a doctoral degree in computational biophysics from MIT. Erik Kangas — LinkedIn

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HIPAA Compliant Email

New HIPAA Security Rule Makes Email Encryption Mandatory—Act Now!

The 2026 Deadline Is Closer Than You Think

The upcoming HIPAA Security Rule overhaul is expected to finalize by mid-2026, and it’s shaping up to be one of the most significant updates in years. Healthcare organizations that fail to prepare, especially when it comes to email security, will face immediate compliance gaps the moment enforcement begins.

Mid-2026 may sound distant, but for healthcare IT and compliance leaders, it’s right around the corner. Regulatory change at this scale doesn’t happen overnight, it requires planning, vendor evaluation, implementation, and internal alignment.

This isn’t a gradual shift. It’s a hard requirement.

Encryption Is About to Become Mandatory

For years, HIPAA has treated encryption as “addressable,” giving organizations flexibility in how they protect sensitive data. That flexibility is disappearing.

Under the updated rule, encryption, particularly for email containing protected health information (PHI), is expected to become a required safeguard.

That means:

  • Encryption must be automatic and standard for email, not optional
  • Policies must be enforced consistently
  • Email security can’t depend on human behavior

If your current system relies on users to manually trigger encryption, it’s already out of step with where compliance is heading. If you’re not encrypting your emails at all, then now is the time to re-evaluate and rest your technology and policies.

Email Is the Weakest Link in Healthcare Security

Email remains the most widely used communication tool in healthcare—and the most common source of data exposure. Every day, sensitive information flows through inboxes, including patient records, lab results, billing details, plan renewals and appointment reminders. Yet many organizations still depend on:

  • Basic TLS encryption that only works under certain conditions
  • Manual processes that leave room for human error
  • Limited visibility into email activity and risk

It only takes one mistake, such as a missed encryption trigger or a misaddressed email, to create a reportable breach. Regulators are well aware of this. That’s why email is a primary focus of the upcoming HIPAA Security Rule changes.

The Cost of Waiting Is Higher Than You Think

Delaying action may feel easier in the short term, but it significantly increases risk. Once the new rule is finalized, organizations without compliant systems may face:

  • Immediate audit failures
  • Regulatory penalties
  • Expensive, rushed remediation efforts
  • Or worst of all, an email security breach

Beyond financial consequences, there’s also reputational harm. Patients expect their data to be protected. A single incident can immediately erode trust and damage your brand beyond repair.

Waiting until the end of 2026 also means that you’ll be competing with every other organization trying to fix the same problem at the same time, driving up costs and limiting vendor availability.

Most Email Solutions Won’t Meet the New Standard

Here’s the uncomfortable reality: many existing email platforms won’t be enough, especially those that are not HIPAA compliant. Common gaps include:

  • Encryption that isn’t automatic or policy-driven
  • Lack of Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
  • Insufficient audit logging for compliance reporting
  • Lack of Zero Trust security principles

On top of that, vendors without alignment to HITRUST certification and Zero-Trust architectures may struggle to demonstrate the level of assurance regulators will expect moving forward.

If your current solution wasn’t designed specifically for healthcare and HIPAA compliance, it’s likely not ready for what’s coming.

LuxSci Secure Email: Built for What’s Next

This is where a purpose-built solution makes all the difference. LuxSci HIPAA compliant email is designed specifically for healthcare organizations navigating the latest compliance requirements, not just today, but in the future regulatory landscape.

LuxSci delivers:

  • Automatic, policy-based encryption that removes user guesswork
  • Advanced DLP controls to prevent PHI exposure before it happens
  • Comprehensive audit logs to support audits and investigations
  • Zero Trust architecture that verifies every user and action

Additionally, LuxSci is HITRUST-certified, helping organizations demonstrate a mature and defensible security posture as regulations tighten. Email data protection isn’t about patching gaps, it’s about eliminating them.

Act Now or Pay Later

If there’s one takeaway, it’s this: the time to act is now. Start by asking a few direct questions:

  • Is our email encryption automatic and enforced?
  • Do we have full visibility into email activity and risk?
  • Is our vendor equipped for evolving HIPAA requirements?

If the answer to any of these is unclear, now’s the time to take action. Organizations that move early will have time to implement the right solution, train their teams, and validate compliance. Those that wait will be forced into reactive decisions under pressure.

Conclusion: The Time to Act is Now!

The HIPAA Security Rule overhaul is coming fast, and it’s raising expectations across the board. Encryption will no longer be addressable, but rather mandatory. As a result, email security can no longer be overlooked, and compliance will no longer tolerate gaps.

LuxSci HIPAA compliant email provides a clear, future-ready path for your organization, combining automated encryption, DLP, auditability, and Zero Trust security in one solution.

The real question isn’t whether change is coming. It’s whether your organization will be ready when it does.

Reach out today. We can look at your existing set up, help you identify the gaps, and show you how LuxSci can help!

FAQs

1. When will the updated HIPAA Security Rule take effect?
The changes to the HIPAA Security Rule are expected to be finalized and announced around mid-2026, with enforcement likely soon after, by the end of the year.

2. Will email encryption truly be mandatory?
Yes, current direction strongly indicates encryption will become a required safeguard, which could start later this year or in early 2027.

3. Is TLS encryption enough for compliance?
No. TLS alone does not provide sufficient, guaranteed protection for PHI.

4. Why is HITRUST important in this context?
HITRUST certification demonstrates a vendor’s strong alignment with healthcare security standards and will likely carry more weight with regulators.

5. How does LuxSci help organizations prepare?
HITRUST-certified LuxSci offers secure email with automated encryption, DLP, audit logs, and Zero Trust architecture, helping organizations meet evolving compliance demands.

LuxSci G2 2026

LuxSci Earns 19 G2 Spring 2026 Badges

LuxSci continues its strong performance in the G2 Spring 2026 Reports, earning 19 badges that reflect real customer satisfaction and consistent product excellence across multiple areas, including email encryption, HIPAA compliant messaging, email security and email gateways.

G2: A Highly Reputable Peer Review Platformn

In a crowded software landscape, it’s easy for bold claims to blur together. That’s where G2 stands apart. Its rankings are based entirely on verified user feedback, giving buyers a clearer picture of how solutions actually perform in day-to-day use, not just how they’re marketed.

For Spring 2026, LuxSci earned recognition across multiple categories, including Leader, Best Customer Support, and Best ROI. Together, these awards show that LuxSci delivers leading technology and a best-in-class customer experience.

What the Badges Represent

Each G2 badge reflects direct input from customers using LuxSci in real-world environments. These evaluations cover usability, onboarding, support responsiveness, and long-term value. LuxSci’s Spring 2026 badges span leadership, customer satisfaction, ROI, and ease of implementation, demonstrating consistent strength across the full customer lifecycle.

Leader Badge: Market Leadership Validated

The Leader badge is awarded to companies with high customer satisfaction and strong market presence. LuxSci’s placement reflects reliable performance, strong security, and continued trust from organizations operating in highly regulated environments like healthcare.

Best Customer Support: A Standout Strength

In secure healthcare communications, timely and accurate support is essential. Issues must be resolved quickly to avoid operational or compliance risks. Customers consistently highlight LuxSci’s fast response times, deep expertise, and a hands-on approach, showing that our technology and our people deliver meaningful, real-world solutions.

Best ROI: Proven Business Value

ROI includes reduced compliance risk, improved efficiency, and scalable operations, not just cost. Customers report measurable benefits from LuxSci’s reliability, built-in compliance, and streamlined workflows, leading to strong long-term value and a solution that keeps you ahead of security and compliance risks.

What This Means for LuxSci Customers

These awards show LuxSci’s ability to serve organizations of varying sizes, from mid-market to enterprise. All reviews are from verified users, ensuring authenticity and transparency. Customers consistently mention reliability, security, and responsive support, along with overall peace of mind. The recognitions validate LuxSci’s ability to deliver secure, dependable communication solutions backed by strong support, including HIPAA compliant email, marketing and forms.

LuxSci’s 10 G2 Spring 2026 badges—including Leader, Best Customer Support, and Best ROI—demonstrate consistent excellence across performance, usability, and customer satisfaction. These results reinforce its position as a trusted provider in secure communications.

LuxSci MFA

Traditional MFA No Longer Qualifies as “Reasonable” Security

For years, multi-factor authentication (MFA) was considered one of the most effective ways to protect sensitive systems. By requiring a second verification step, such as a text message code or push notification, organizations could significantly reduce the risk of compromised passwords.

But the threat landscape has changed.

Today, attackers routinely bypass traditional MFA using techniques such as MFA evasion, token replay attacks, and consent phishing. These methods are no longer rare or highly sophisticated. They are widely used, automated, and increasingly effective.

As a result, regulators, auditors, and security frameworks are raising expectations for authentication security. For healthcare organizations in particular, traditional MFA alone may no longer satisfy the HIPAA requirement to implement “reasonable and appropriate safeguards.”

In the near future, email systems that rely only on basic MFA, without conditional access or phishing-resistant authentication, may increasingly be viewed as security gaps during risk assessments.

Why Traditional MFA Is No Longer Enough

Traditional MFA still improves security compared to passwords alone. However, many common MFA methods were designed before today’s phishing techniques and cloud authentication attacks became widespread.

Common MFA methods include:

  • SMS verification codes
  • Email-based authentication codes
  • Push notifications to mobile apps

While these mechanisms add friction for attackers, they can still be intercepted or manipulated during sophisticated phishing attacks. Because modern attackers now target authentication workflows directly, organizations relying solely on traditional MFA may be more vulnerable than they realize.

How Attackers Bypass MFA Today

Cybercriminals increasingly rely on tools that capture credentials and authentication tokens during login sessions. Three attack techniques are now especially common.

  • MFA Evasion and Phishing Proxies – Attackers frequently deploy adversary-in-the-middle phishing kits that sit between the user and the real login service. When users enter their credentials and MFA code on a phishing page, the attacker forwards the information to the legitimate site and captures the authentication session. The user successfully logs in—but the attacker gains access as well. If attackers capture those tokens, they can reuse them to access the account directly.
  • Token Replay Attacks – After successful authentication, systems typically issue session tokens that allow users to remain logged in without repeated MFA prompts. This technique has been widely observed in attacks targeting cloud email platforms such as Microsoft 365, allowing attackers to access email data even when MFA is enabled.
  • Consent Phishing – Consent phishing bypasses MFA entirely. Instead of stealing passwords, attackers trick users into granting permissions to malicious applications that request access to their mailbox or files. If users approve the request, the attacker’s application receives persistent access to the account through APIs—often without triggering security alerts.

Why Email Authentication Matters Most in Healthcare

Email remains one of the most critical systems in healthcare organizations. It supports patient communication, internal collaboration, and the exchange of sensitive information. Unfortunately, it is also the most frequently targeted entry point for cyberattacks.

Once attackers gain access to an email account, they can:

  • Impersonate healthcare staff
  • Launch internal phishing attacks
  • Access sensitive patient communications
  • Extract protected health information (PHI)

Because of this, email authentication controls are becoming a major focus for security teams and compliance auditors alike.

Evolving Regulatory Expectations

HIPAA does not prescribe specific technologies, but it requires organizations to implement safeguards that are “reasonable and appropriate” based on risk. As new attack methods emerge, the definition of reasonable security evolves.

Today, many security frameworks and regulatory bodies are emphasizing stronger identity protections, including:

  • Phishing-resistant authentication
  • Conditional access policies
  • Monitoring for suspicious login behavior
  • Controls for third-party application permissions

Organizations that rely solely on basic MFA may increasingly struggle to demonstrate that their authentication protections are sufficient.

The Shift Toward Phishing-Resistant Authentication

To address the weaknesses of traditional MFA, many organizations are adopting phishing-resistant authentication technologies, which can be enabled with tools like Duo and Okta. These solutions rely on cryptographic authentication tied to trusted devices, which prevents attackers from capturing or replaying login credentials.

Examples include:

  • Hardware security keys
  • Passkeys
  • Certificate-based authentication

Because authentication is tied to both the device and the legitimate website domain, these technologies significantly reduce the success rate of phishing attacks.

Why Conditional Access Is Becoming Essential

Conditional access adds another layer of protection by evaluating context and risk before granting access. Instead of treating every login the same, conditional access policies analyze signals such as:

  • Device security status
  • Geographic location
  • Network reputation
  • User behavior patterns

If something appears unusual, such as a login from a new country, the system can require stronger authentication or block the attempt altogether. This risk-based approach to authentication helps prevent many account compromise scenarios.

The Future of HIPAA Risk Assessments

As authentication threats evolve, healthcare security assessments are increasingly focusing on identity protection maturity. Organizations may begin seeing findings related to:

  • Weak or outdated MFA methods
  • Lack of conditional access policies
  • Insufficient monitoring of login activity
  • Unrestricted third-party application permissions

In particular, email systems without advanced authentication protections may be flagged as high-risk vulnerabilities, especially when PHI is accessible.

LuxSci’s Modern Approach to MFA

Modern threats require more than a simple second login factor. LuxSci approaches authentication security with layered identity protection designed specifically for healthcare environments.

Instead of relying solely on basic MFA methods like SMS codes or email verification, LuxSci supports stronger authentication controls and policies that align with evolving security expectations. These protections can include:

  • Strong multi-factor authentication options
  • Monitoring for unusual login behavior
  • Enhanced identity verification mechanisms

By combining multiple security layers within its HIPAA-compliant secure communications email and marketing solutions, LuxSci helps healthcare organizations protect sensitive email communications while maintaining usability for providers, health plan administrators, payment providers, and patient engagement teams.

Conclusion

Multi-factor authentication remains an important security control—but not all MFA is created equal. Attack techniques such as phishing proxies, token replay, and consent phishing have demonstrated that traditional MFA methods can be bypassed. As a result, regulators and auditors are increasingly expecting stronger identity protections.

For healthcare organizations that rely heavily on email communications, the implications are significant. Weak authentication controls can expose sensitive patient data and may soon appear as high-risk findings during HIPAA risk assessments. The organizations best positioned for the future will be those that modernize authentication strategies now, moving toward phishing-resistant methods, conditional access policies, and layered identity protection.

Reach out to LuxSci today to learn how HIPAA compliant email can support both your organization’s engagement and cybersecurity needs.


FAQs

1. What is traditional MFA?

Traditional MFA refers to authentication methods that require a second verification step, typically SMS codes, email codes, or push notifications.

2. Why can attackers bypass MFA today?

Modern phishing tools can intercept authentication sessions or steal login tokens, allowing attackers to access accounts even when MFA is enabled.

3. What is phishing-resistant authentication?

Phishing-resistant authentication uses cryptographic methods tied to trusted devices, preventing attackers from capturing login credentials.

4. Why is email security especially important for healthcare organizations?

Email systems often contain patient communications and sensitive information, making them a common target for cyberattacks.

5. How can organizations improve authentication security?

Organizations can strengthen identity security by adopting phishing-resistant authentication methods, implementing conditional access policies, and monitoring login activity.

LuxSci Automated Email Encryption

Encryption Optional Email Will Fail Audits in 2026 and Beyond

For years, healthcare organizations have relied on click-to-encrypt email workflows and secure portals as a practical compromise between usability and compliance. Or in some cases, they simply thought most of their emails did not need to be compliant. In regulated industries where data security and privacy are paramount, this approach was still considered “good enough.”

That era is ending.

As we progress into 2026 and beyond, regulators, auditors, and cyber insurers are sending a clear and consistent message: encryption that depends on human choice is no longer acceptable. It’s already happening. Encryption optional email isn’t merely raising concerns, it’s failing audits outright.

An Email Threat Landscape That’s Changing Faster Than Email Habits

Historically, email encryption was treated as a best practice rather than a hard requirement. If an organization could demonstrate that encryption tools existed and that employees had access to them, auditors were often satisfied. The box was checked, everybody moved on.

Today, the questions auditors ask are fundamentally different. Instead of asking whether encryption is available, they are asking whether sensitive data can ever leave the organization unencrypted. If the answer is yes, even in rare cases, or even accidentally, that’s no longer viewed as an acceptable gap. It’s viewed as inadequate control.

Why 2026 Is a Tipping Point for Email Security

Several forces are converging here in 2026 that make optional encryption increasingly untenable. Regulatory scrutiny around PHI and PII exposure continues to intensify. Breach costs and litigation are rising, with email remaining one of the most common vectors for data exposure and breaches. AI is also changing the game for cybercriminals, and attacks will continue to increase and be more sophisticated. As a result, cyber insurers are tightening underwriting requirements and demanding stronger, more predictable controls.

At the same time, email user behavior is unpredictable and inconsistent, which is a non-starter for data security in today’s world.

Taken together, these trends and behaviors point to a single requirement: email security controls must be automated. They must be enforced by systems, not dependent on employee memory, judgment, or good intentions.

The Reality of “Encryption Optional” in Practice

On paper, optional encryption can sound reasonable. In practice, it creates gaps large enough to open you up to a breach.

Secure portals are a good example. They require recipients to click a link, authenticate, and access content in a controlled environment. While this protects data in transit, and is a better approach than no security at all, it also introduces friction. And people don’t like friction. Senders forget to use the portal. Recipients ask for “just a quick email instead.” Shortcuts are taken to save time. And every shortcut becomes a risk.

Click-to-encrypt systems suffer from a similar problem. They rely on users to correctly identify sensitive data and remember to take action. But people often misclassify information, forget to click the button, or assume someone else has already secured the message. From an auditor’s perspective, this isn’t a training failure. It’s a set-up and control failure.

Email Security Defaults Are the New Normal

The latest message from regulators, auditors, and insurers is clear. If encryption is optional, data vulnerabilities become inevitable.

What can you do?

Below is a quick email security checklist to help you get started. Cyber insurers may require or recommend the following safeguards during the underwriting process, such as:

  • Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
  • Endpoint protection
  • Encrypted backups
  • Incident response planning
  • Encryption protocols for sensitive data in transit and at rest, including PHI in emails

In 2026 and beyond, healthcare organizations and regulated industries will be judged not by what they allow, but by what they prevent. Automated, encrypted email is the new. normal.

Want to learn more about LuxSci HIPAA compliant email? Reach out today.

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LuxSci PHI Identifiers

What You Need to Know About PHI Identifiers

It’s hard to understate the benefits of using protected health information (PHI) in your patient engagement efforts. By effectively leveraging PHI, you can create highly-targeted and personalized email marketing campaigns, which have greater potential to connect with your patients and customers – and drive your desired outcomes.

However, before diving in, it’s essential to be aware of HIPAA’s complex compliance requirements and how they govern healthcare organizations’ marketing communications. Chief among these considerations is the concept of PHI identifiers and the role they play in classifying and protecting sensitive patient data. With this in mind, let’s explore HIPAA’s 18 PHI identifiers

What is a PHI Identifier?

Before we detail the 18 different PHI identifiers, it’s crucial to first distinguish between what counts as PHI and what, in reality, is personally identifiable information (PII).

PHI (as well as its digital equivalent or electronic protected health information (ePHI)), is defined as “individually identifiable protected health information” and specifically refers to three classes of data:

  • An individual’s past, present, or future physical or mental health or condition.
  • The past, present, or future provisioning of health care to an individual.
  • The past, present, or future payment-related information for the provisioning of health care to an individual.

In short, for an individual’s PII to be classed as protected health information it must be related to a health condition, their healthcare provision, or the payment of that provision. So, a patient’s email address in isolation, for example, isn’t necessarily PHI. However when combined with any information about their healthcare – such as in a patient engagement email campaign – it would constitute PHI.

Put another way, as HIPAA is designed to enforce standards and best practices in the healthcare industry, it’s concerned with protecting health-related information. While the protection of general PII is of the utmost importance, that’s a significantly larger remit – and, consequently, one that’s shared by a variety of data privacy regulations covering different industries and regions (PCI-DSS, GDPR, etc.).

What are the 18 PHI Identifiers?

With the above background in mind, we now have a clearer understanding of what is classed as PHI and, as a result, what data needs to be de-identified. The HIPAA Privacy Rule provides two methods for the de-identification of PHI: the Expert Determination and Safe Harbour methods.

Expert Determination requires a statistical or scientific expert to assess the PHI and conclude that the risk of it being able to identify a particular patient is very low. Safe Harbour, meanwhile, involves systematically removing or securing specific data types to mitigate the risk of patient identification. It’s from the Safe Harbour method that we get the following 18 PHI identifiers:    

  • Patient Names
  • Geographical Elements: street address, city, and all other subdivisions lower than the state.
  • Dates Related to Patient’s ID or Health History: eD.O.B, D.O.D, admission and discharge dates, etc.
  • Telephone Numbers
  • Fax Numbers
  • Email Addresses
  • Social Security Numbers
  • Medical Record Numbers
  • Health Insurance Beneficiary Numbers
  • Account Numbers
  • Certificate or License Numbers: as these can confirm an individual’s professional qualifications or credentials, and when combined with PHI, are exploitable by malicious actors.
  • Vehicle Identifiers: i.e., license plate and serial numbers
  • Device Identifiers and Serial Numbers: those belonging to smartphones, tablets, or medical devices, because they communicate with healthcare companies during provision and can be linked back to the patient
  • Digital Identifiers: namely website addresses used by healthcare companies that patients may visit (for healthcare education, event registration, etc.)
  • Internet Protocol (IP) Addresses: the digital location from where a patient’s device accesses the internet; this can be used to acquire subsequent PHI
  • Biometric Identifiers: e.g., fingerprints, voice samples, etc.
  • Full Face Photographs: in additional to other comparable images
  • Other Unique Numbers, Codes, or Characteristics: not covered by the prior 17 categories

As illustrated by the above list, HIPAA’s list of PHI identifiers is comprehensive, covering all aspects of an individual’s identity and digital footprint. In light of this, when handling patient data it’s crucial to use platforms and digital solutions that have been designed with the secure transmission and storage of PHI in mind.

Harness the Benefits of Using PHI for Better Patient Engagement

As the most experienced provider of HIPAA-compliant communications, LuxSci specializes in secure email, text, marketing and forms for healthcare providers, payers and suppliers. LuxSci’s Secure Healthcare Communications suite offers flexible encryption, customizable security policies, and automated features to ensure HIPAA compliance and the protection of PHI data.

Interested in discovering how LuxSci’s solutions can help you securely engage with your patients and customers?

Contact us today!

 

LuxSci Digital Patient Engagement

Overcoming Barriers To Successful Digital Health Engagement

Effective patient engagement is increasingly becoming a top priority for many healthcare organizations  – and for good reason.

First and foremost, the more a patient or customer is engaged in their healthcare journey, the better their health outcomes and quality of life. With increased communication and engagement, patients are more likely to have potential conditions diagnosed sooner, take preventative measures to prevent illnesses, and educate themselves on ways to manage and improve their health. 

However, the benefits don’t end there and aren’t restricted to the patient. Engaged patients pay bills faster, are more open to new products and services, and report higher levels of satisfaction with the companies that contribute to their health and well being. For healthcare providers, payers, and suppliers, this results in higher revenue, more opportunities for growth, and the attainment of long-term organizational goals. 

Digital Patient Engagement Is Easier than Ever 

Fortunately, advances in technology and their rapid adoption by patients and customers (expedited by the COVID-19 pandemic) have made it easier for healthcare organizations to achieve successful digital interactions and engagement. Healthcare companies have more tools and channels than ever before to help conduct personalized engagement campaigns that meet patients on their terms, making it easier to capture their attention. Secure email takes it even further with the ability to include protected health information in messages to personalize

Despite these advancements, however, there are still several barriers that prevent healthcare companies from engaging with patients and reaping the associated benefits. Fortunately, each barrier can be overcome to help patients and customers feel more included and instrumental in their healthcare journeys.

With this in mind, this post discusses the main barriers to digital patient engagement and how to overcome them to drive better healthcare outcomes for your patients and growth for your organization. 

The Main Barriers To Digital Health Engagement

The four key barriers to digital health engagement that we’ll explore in this post are as follows:

    1. Low Health Literacy

    1. Privacy And Security Concerns

    1. Age And Cultural Differences

    1. Lack Of Personalization

Let’s review each barrier in turn, while offering potential solutions that will contribute to greater digital health patient engagement for your healthcare organization. 

Low Health Literacy

The first barrier to successful digital health patient engagement is your patients having insufficient health or medical knowledge. Healthcare is laden with terminology, including medical conditions, pharmaceuticals, the human anatomy, and many patients simply don’t understand enough to get more involved with their healthcare journey.  Worse still, few patients will admit they don’t understand, as people are often embarrassed at their lack of knowledge.


Consequently, if your digital health patient engagement campaigns are heavy with medical jargon and lack personalization, patients won’t act on the information to drive better outcomes.

Solution: Create Educational Health Content

Develop simple educational resources for your patients that apply to their unique needs and condition. This will help them understand their state of health and make better sense of subsequent communications they’ll receive from you and their other healthcare providers.

This educational content could be in the form of periodic email newsletters, giving you a great reason to keep in touch with your patients. Alternatively, they could take the form of blog posts or articles on a patient portal, which could be supported by an email marketing campaign to let patients know about the article. In helping to increase your patients’ health literacy, you offer additional value as a healthcare provider, payer or supplier.


Additionally, keep the medical jargon in your email communications and other patient engagement channels to a minimum. Empathize with the fact that some patients won’t understand as much as others when it comes to healthcare provision and explain things as plainly as possible. 

Data Privacy And Security Concerns

Unfortunately, due to its sensitivity and critical nature patient data, i.e., protected health information (PHI) is highly prized by cybercriminals. Subsequently, there have been many high-profile healthcare breaches, such as the Change Healthcare breach, in early 2024, which affected 100 million individuals, that make patients increasingly wary about sharing health-related information via email, text, or other digital communication channels.


That said, their wary attitude is the right one to adopt, but not at the expense of enhancing engagement and improving their health outcomes. 

Solution: Invest In HIPAA Compliant Communication Tools

Ensure that the digital tools you use to engage with patients possess the security features required for HIPAA compliance. The  Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act  (HIPAA) provides a series of guidelines that healthcare organizations must comply with to best safeguard PHI. Consequently, solutions that promote their commitment to HIPAA compliance, such as LuxSci, will understand the privacy, security, and regulatory needs of healthcare companies and have developed their tools accordingly.


Most importantly, a HIPAA compliant vendor will sign a Business Associates Agreement (BAA), the legal documentation that outlines your respective responsibilities regarding the protection of PHI. Safe in the knowledge that the patient data under your care is secure, you can concentrate your efforts on personalizing your digital communication campaigns for maximum effect. 

Age And Cultural Differences

Ineffective patient engagement efforts (or a complete lack of engagement, altogether) can reinforce cliches about the use of digital tools within particular patient groups. The reality, however, is that many healthcare organizations don’t account for age differences and channel preferences in their patient engagement strategies.


Subsequently, if you only engage with patients on a single communication channel, you risk alienating others because it’s not their medium of choice.  

Solution: Adopt a Multi-Channel Engagement Strategy

Instead of focusing on one communication medium, diversify your approach and adopt a multi-channel engagement strategy. This could encompass email, SMS, and phone outreach, for instance. This covers the more proverbial bases and gives you a chance to engage with patients on their preferred terms.

Lack Of Personalization

One of the main reasons that healthcare organizations fail to engage with their patients is that they adopt a “one-size-fits-all” approach, attempting to craft communications that appeal to as many people as possible. Unfortunately, this has the opposite of the desired approach, not connecting anyone in particular and engaging few patients as a result.  

Solution: Personalize Your Patient Engagement Campaigns with PHI

With a HIPAA compliant solution, you can use PHI to personalize patient engagement, leveraging their health data to craft messaging that reflects their specific condition, needs, and where they are along their healthcare journey. PHI also can be used to segment patients into subgroups, grouping them by specific commonalities such as age, gender, health condition, and lifestyle factors.

Successful Digital Health Patient Engagement with LuxSci

With more than 20 years of experience in delivering secure digital healthcare communication solutions to some of the world’s leading healthcare providers, payers and suppliers, LuxSci is a trusted partner for organizations looking to boost their patient engagement efforts, while protecting patient data and remaining compliant at all times.

LuxSci’s suite of HIPAA compliant solutions include:

    • Secure Email: HIPAA compliant email solutions for executing highly scalable, high volume email campaigns that include PHI – 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 upgrade your cybersecurity posture for PHI and ensure HIPAA compliance? Contact us today!

HIPAA email laws

How To Overcome Email Encryption Challenges in Healthcare

Encryption is a critical security measure for protecting electronic protected health information (ePHI) included within email communications, and a key technical safeguard under the HIPAA Security Rule. However, despite its efficacy in helping protect sensitive patient data from malicious actors, encryption can be difficult to successfully implement. 

Technical complexity, user resistance, and compatibility issues across different email systems can emerge as persistent problems, leading to frustration, risky workarounds, and, ultimately, increased risk of ePHI exposure and compliance violations. Without thoughtful deployment and support, encryption can become a barrier to successful secure email communication in healthcare, as opposed to a measure that underpins it.

To help you ensure secure, HIPAA compliant email communication, this post discusses the main encryption challenges you’re likely to encounter, how they can diminish your email security posture, and the measures you can take to overcome them. 

What Is Email Encryption?

Before we discuss the most frequent email encryption challenges faced by healthcare organizations, here’s a quick refresher on what email encryption is and why it’s so important for securing sensitive patient data.  

Email encryption is the process of scrambling the content of a message to make it unreadable as it’s sent to recipients or stored in a database. Only the intended recipient, who has the encryption key, can decrypt the email and access the data within. 

Consequently, in the event an encrypted message is intercepted by malicious actors in transit or exfiltrated from a data store during a security breach, they won’t be able to make sense of it. This renders any ePHI included in the message unintelligible and, therefore, worthless, adding another layer of security that preserves patient privacy – and keeps your business safe.

Common Email Encryption Challenges 

Let’s move on to detailing some of the most frequent encryption challenges that must be overcome by healthcare organizations to ensure secure email communication and HIPAA compliance. 

Decrypting Messages Is Too Difficult

The more difficult or drawn out it is for recipients to decrypt their email messages, the more likely they’ll simply go unread or end up deleted. If the decryption process is too cumbersome, which could include requiring a user to log into a separate site (i.e., a web portal), verify their identity multiple times, create a new account, or install additional software, it adds complexity. This can drive users to seek workarounds or cut corners, such as having information sent to them through unsecured channels, which puts your company at risk.  

Similarly, email clients, browsers, and security settings may impact the decryption process, causing compatibility issues that prevent users from accessing their messages. Within a healthcare setting, where timely communication is crucial, such obstacles can disrupt workflows, slow down patient care, and lead to HIPAA compliance violations if users resort to unencrypted alternatives. 

Encryption that Requires Manual Intervention 

Some email encryption tools require users to manually encrypt messages. If users forget to apply encryption or misconfigure settings, sensitive patient data could be exposed, leading to compliance violations and ePHI exfiltration. 

For employees who handle ePHI and need to send encrypted emails, remembering to enable encryption (vs. automated encryption) is an extra step that introduces the risk of human error into the process. To offer a related, and more relatable, example: how many times have you forgotten to include an attachment when sending an email, even when referencing the attachment in the message? It’s all too easily done. In the same way, an inexperienced, tired, or distracted user could simply neglect to turn on or correctly configure encryption before sending an email, putting patient data at risk. 

Increased IT and Administrative Overhead

The two email encryption challenges outlined above contribute to a third overarching difficulty for healthcare organizations: an increased workload for its IT, security and operations teams. 

First of all, IT, security and operations must establish and continuously enforce encryption policies, configuring rules that ensure sensitive patient data is encrypted while non-sensitive, business communication continues to flow unobstructed. Misconfigured policies can cause over-encryption, resulting in user inaccessibility and disruptions, or under-encryption, leading to exposure of ePHI and HIPAA compliance violations.

Second, IT support teams must troubleshoot user issues: namely employees and external recipients who are unfamiliar with encryption protocols and need support in overcoming difficulties in message decryption. These could be caused by compatibility issues between different email clients or systems, expired or missing digital certificates, incorrect key exchanges, or confusion surrounding accessing encrypted messages through portals or attachments.

Lastly, IT and governance teams must keep up-to-date with changing regulatory updates and email security threats. As compliance requirements evolve, healthcare organizations must reassess encryption standards, upgrade outdated protocols, and ensure that their workforce adheres to best practices. Without an adequate strategy and the right systems in place, managing encryption can become a constant drain on IT bandwidth, taking personnel away from other aspects of their work that contribute to patient care. 

Effective Strategies For Email Encryption

Having discussed the most common encryption challenges and how they can impact a company’s email security posture, let’s look at some of the most powerful mitigation strategies, which will improve the email encryption experience for both senders and recipients.

Balance Security With Ease of Use

To overcome the challenges of user inaccessibility, human error, and excessive administrative overhead, healthcare organizations must balance the ease of use of their encryption solutions with the level of security they provide. 

While opting for the most secure encryption protocols intuitively seems like the best option, extra security often comes at the expense of usability, which can render the encryption irrelevant if users decide to circumvent it altogether, as outlined earlier. Instead, it’s essential to evaluate the sensitivity of message content and select a corresponding level of encryption. 

Moving onto practical technical examples, Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a widely used email encryption standard, thanks to its ease of implementation and use, i.e., once activated, no further action is required by the user to encrypt the message content. However, TLS only encrypts ePHI in transit, i.e., when being sent to recipients, which may prove insufficient for highly sensitive patient data.

In contrast, encryption protocols such as Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME),  AES-256 and Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) provide more comprehensive encryption, safeguarding the ePHI contained in email communications both in transit and at rest, i.e., when stored in a database. Now, while this makes them more effective at securing patient data and achieving HIPAA compliance, these standards are more complicated to implement and to use than TLS encryption. 

S/MIME requires users to obtain and install digital certificates from a Certificate Authority (CA), which verifies their respective identities and provides the public key for encryption. Consequently, both the sender and recipient must have valid certificates; if either party’s certificate is revoked or expires, they won’t be able to encrypt or decrypt the message, respectively.

With PGP, meanwhile, users must manually generate and exchange public/private keys. This offers greater flexibility than S/MIME but requires careful key management, which can be confusing for non-technical users. If a recipient doesn’t have the sender’s public key, they won’t be able to decrypt the message. Additionally, both S/MIME and PGP require a public key infrastructure (PKI), which can add considerable administrative overhead, particularly in regards to the management of certificates, public keys, and user credentials. 

Accounting for this, healthcare organizations can balance security with accessibility by employing a tiered encryption strategy: using TLS for lower-risk communication while opting for S/MIME or PGP for more sensitive communications.  

Enable Automatic Encryption 

Subsequently, the challenge of balancing security with accessibility can be remediated by deploying an email delivery platform that not only removes the need for manual user intervention but also automatically applies the appropriate encryption standard based on message content and delivery conditions. Rather than relying on users to choose the correct method—or worse, bypass encryption altogether—modern email solutions like LuxSci can intelligently enforce encryption without affecting the user experience.

Many healthcare companies rely on TLS encryption because it eliminates the need for encryption keys or certificates, additional log-ins, etc. For this reason, it’s often referred to as  ‘invisible encryption’ for its lack of effect on the user experience. 

However, to be most effective, both the sender’s and recipient’s email servers must support enforced TLS (i.e., TLS 1.2 and above). In the event the recipient’s email server doesn’t support TLS, the email message will be delivered unencrypted or fail to send altogether, depending on the server configurations. Additionally, once the email is delivered to the recipient’s inbox, unless the recipient’s email infrastructure encrypts messages at rest, it will be stored in an unencrypted format. 

Consequently, while TLS is ideal for email messaging that doesn’t contain highly sensitive ePHI, it’s insufficient for all healthcare communication. To ensure the secure and HIPAA compliant inclusion of patient data in emails, healthcare organizations should opt for an email solution that supports automated, policy-based encryption, which can upgrade to S/MIME or PGP when necessary. This offers the combined benefits of optimal ePHI security, minimal administrative burden, and removing the need for staff intervention.

Invest in Employee Education

While a flexible encryption policy and deploying email solutions that support automation will go a long way towards overcoming email encryption challenges, these efforts can still be undermined if users aren’t sufficiently educated on their benefits and use. For this reason, it’s crucial that healthcare companies take the time to educate their employees on both the how and why of email encryption.  

Even the most advanced encryption systems can fail if employees don’t understand how to use them properly, as well as what to look out for in their day-to-day email use. Some aspects of email encryption, such as recognizing secure message formats or troubleshooting delivery issues, may still require user awareness. With this in mind, employee training programs should focus on recognizing when additional encryption measures are necessary, how to ask for assistance, the dangers of unsecured channels, and how to report suspicious activity in addition to the practical aspects of using your email delivery platform. 

Overcome Email Encryption Challenges with LuxSci

LuxSci is a leader in secure healthcare communication, offering HIPAA compliant solutions that empower organizations to connect with patients securely and effectively. With over 20 years of expertise, we’ve facilitated the delivery of billions of encrypted emails for healthcare providers, payers, and suppliers.

Luxsci’s proprietary SecureLine encryption technology is specially designed to help healthcare organizations overcome frequent encryption challenges and better ensure HIPAA compliance with powerful, flexible encryption capabilities. Its features include: 

  • Comprehensive email encryption: ensuring the encryption of patient data in transit and at rest. 
  • Automated encryption: “set it and forget it” email encryption guarantees security and HIPAA compliance – with no action required on the part of users once configured. 
  • Flexible encryption: dynamically determining the optimal level of email encryption, as per the recipient’s security posture, job role and supported encryption methods. This makes sure messages are delivered securely while maintaining HIPAA compliance.

Ready to take your healthcare email engagement to the next level? Contact LuxSci today!

What is a cyber risk assessment?

What Is a Cyber Risk Assessment?

As cyber threats become both more frequent and sophisticated, it’s essential for healthcare companies to strengthen their cybersecurity posture and safeguard the electronic protected health information (ePHI) within their IT ecosystems and communications. This begins with a comprehensive cyber risk assessment that spans infrastructure, applications and communications. 

A cyber risk assessment enables healthcare companies to focus their attention on the IT areas that need the most improvement, allowing them to be more effective in their threat mitigation efforts. This not only reduces the chances of cyber attacks but helps them align with HIPAA’s guidelines and maintain the operational integrity required to best serve their patients and customers.

Let’s discuss why it’s vital that healthcare companies conduct thorough cyber threat risk assessments and the steps your organization can take to carry one out effectively.

Why Are Cyber Risk Assessments Crucial for Healthcare Organizations?

In an increasingly digitized healthcare landscape, conducting regular risk assessments is essential for companies of all sizes, in every industry. For healthcare companies, charged with protecting patient data, it’s especially critical and often a compliance requirement. Electronic PHI, which contains details of an individual’s health history, including current conditions, past illnesses and procedures, prescribed medicine, etc., is very sensitive in nature, so healthcare companies must go the extra mile to ensure its protection in transit and at rest. 

Performing a cyber threat risk assessment is the first step to achieving this critical requirement. A risk assessment allows you to identify all of the ePHI within your business, understand the threats it faces, determine gaps in your cybersecurity posture, and, most importantly, mitigate them.  

Additionally, from a compliance perspective, conducting regular risk assessments is a key requirement of HIPAA’s Security Rule. Consequently, healthcare companies must carry out periodic risk assessments if they want to comply with HIPAA regulations, and avoid the consequences of non-compliance. A risk assessment provides documented evidence, to auditors, supply-chain partners, and others, that you are conscious of security concerns and have taken the proper steps to mitigate them. 

How Do You Conduct A Cyber Risk Assessment? 

Now that we’ve discussed their importance, let’s turn our attention to how healthcare organizations can conduct effective cyber risk assessments. 

Identify Assets

The first, and, arguably, most important step of a risk assessment is identifying your organization’s digital assets, which include: 

  • Hardware: endpoint devices (desktops, laptops, smartphones, etc.), servers, network equipment, medical equipment, etc. 
  • Systems, infrastructure and applications: operating systems, cloud services, etc. 
  • Data, i.e., ePHI

Now, the reason asset identification could be considered the most crucial part of a risk assessment is that a healthcare organization‘s security teams can’t protect what they aren’t aware of! 

Consequently, weeding out instances of “shadow IT”, i.e., the use of applications and/or systems without the approval of a company’s IT department is essential. Otherwise, you could have cases in which ePHI is used in applications, resides on databases, and so on – without it being adequately safeguarded. 

Once you’ve identified your assets, you need to classify them: based on their sensitivity and potential impact if a security incident were to occur.

Identify Vulnerabilities and Threats

Having successfully catalogued your assets, you must now establish the factors most likely to compromise their security. This first means pinpointing the vulnerabilities in your IT ecosystem, which could include:

  • A lack of encryption, or weak standards
  • Lax access controls
  • Weak password policies 
  • Lack of monitoring and logging 
  • Outdated software (with some no longer being supported by its vendor) 
  • End-of-life hardware
  • Infrequent back-ups
  • Unverified or insecure third-party vendors

When you have a better understanding of these vulnerabilities, which are called attack vectors, you can then determine the most likely threats to ePHI based on the gaps in your security posture. These include:

  • Data breaches or exposure
  • Malware, e.g., ransomware, viruses, spyware, etc. 
  • Social engineering phishing
  • Insider threats (whether through malice or human error)
  • Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks

Fortunately, there is an array of scanning tools that will help you find your cybersecurity vulnerabilities. As far as understanding the main threats to your sensitive patient and customer data, you need to keep up with the latest in threat intelligence. Cybercriminals are always devising new ways to infiltrate healthcare organizations’ networks, so your security teams must remain aware of emerging cyber threats. 

Risk Prioritization

So, now you have catalogued your assets, determined their vulnerabilities, and identified the threats. However, implementing cyber threat mitigation measures requires resources – namely time and money – so you must prioritize which risks to mitigate first, based on their likelihood and impact.

First, how likely is a threat to exploit a vulnerability? Healthcare organizations typically determine this through existing threat databases, such as MITRE, as well as keeping up-to-date on the latest threat intelligence and determining how it pertains to your company. 

Secondly, evaluate the potential impact, or consequences, of a threat actually manifesting, i.e., a an email breach or a malicious actor successfully pulling off a cyber attack and infiltrating your network. When analyzing the potential impact, consider the financial, operational, reputational, and compliance implications. 

Report Findings

At this point, you should report the findings of the risk assessments to your company’s key stakeholders, e.g., upper management, compliance officers, IT management and security, etc. This ensures that decision-makers understand the nature of the top threats facing your organization, their potential business impact, and the urgency of implementing mitigation controls. 

This also helps security teams secure the resources they need to bolster their cybersecurity posture accordingly. An additional benefit of this reporting is that it provides an audit trail for compliance efforts, as it demonstrates your efforts to better protect patient and customer data. 

Implement Mitigation Measures

Now, we’ve come to the point in the risk assessment process where you act on your due diligence and implement the policies and controls that will better protect patient data and comply with HIPAA guidelines.  

Mitigation measures broadly fall into three categories: 

  • Preventive: e.g., encryption, access control, user authentication (e.g., multi-factor authentication (MFA))
  • Detective: e.g., vulnerability scanning, continuous monitoring
  • Corrective: e.g., incident response, backups and disaster recovery

A robust cybersecurity posture requires a combination of all three. Your risk assessment may reveal that your organization is strong in one aspect but less so in others, or you may need to bolster your efforts across the board. 

Document Your Risk Mitigation Measures

Create a risk mitigation implementation report that details how your organization executed its cyber threat mitigation strategies. This should include: 

  • Affected assets: the parts of your IT infrastructure (servers, databases, etc.) and applications you identified as vulnerable and the severity of their corresponding threats. 
  • Mitigation actions: the specific action(s) undertaken to mitigate cyber threats against the asset, e.g., enhancing encryption standards, strengthening password policies, conducting cyber threat awareness training, etc. 
  • Technical details: where applicable, such as a particular update applied to an application, how a system has been configured, which new software solution has been deployed, and so on.
  • Post-mitigation risk assessment: re-evaluate the risk level of each asset after the implementation of new security measures. 
  • Monitoring and compliance: detail how the organization will monitor the efficacy of the implemented measures, as well as how your enhanced controls and policies align with compliance standards (e.g., HIPAA, NIST, HITRUST, etc).

As with the report for stakeholders after the initial stages of the assessment, the risk mitigation implementation report also leaves a compliance audit trail, which will become all the more important when the proposed changes to the HIPAA Security Rule come into effect.

Continuous Monitoring and Review

As detailed in your risk mitigation implementation report, you must continuously monitor your IT infrastructure to assess the effectiveness of your newly implemented policies and controls. This process also mitigates cyber risk, in and of itself, as it provides fewer opportunities for malicious actors to breach your network: you’ll have systems in place to alert you of suspicious activity. 

Additionally, you must regularly reassess your organization’s cyber risks as new threats emerge, your IT ecosystem evolves, or if you succumb to a cyber attack. 

How Often Should You Conduct Cyber Risk Assessments? 

Healthcare organizations should carry out a cyber risk assessment at least once a year, with respect to time, or when they make changes to their IT infrastructure. With the proposed changes to the HIPAA Security Rule on the horizon, now is an opportune time to conduct a risk assessment and measure your cyber threat readiness against the new stipulations of the soon-to-be-updated Security Rule.

Also, as alluded to above, if you suffer a security incident, you must conduct a post-breach assessment, once the threat is contained, to establish how a malicious actor breached your network – and how to prevent it from happening again. 

How LuxSci Helps Mitigate Cyber Risk in the Healthcare Industry

With more than 20 years of experience, LuxSci has developed the required expertise to make secure communication solutions tailored to meet the stringent cyber risk mitigation needs of the healthcare industry.

LuxSci’s suite of HIPAA-compliant communication solutions includes:

  • Secure Email: HIPAA compliant email solutions for executing highly scalable, high volume email campaigns that include PHI – 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 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 how LuxSci can help you protect your patient’s ePHI, mitigate cyber risk, and ensure HIPAA compliance for your email and communications? Contact us today!