In the exceptionally regulated and litigious international in which we stay, sending, receiving or handling sensitive documents and statistics via e mail or offerings that use email may be undeniable negligent. Unfortunately, many healthcare businesses are transporting Protected Health Information (PHI) and Social Security info with the aid of e mail or offerings that use email each day because they misunderstand or push aside the dangers. This article seeks to state the troubles and make clear the important thing points which can be frequently misunderstood.
Email threat
Although electronic mail is used every day via almost every business enterprise, it’s miles inherently insecure and the risks of the usage of this sort of records transmission for PHI aren’t absolutely preferred.
When a organisation or company makes use of a web fax carrier that makes use of fax-to-email or electronic mail-to-fax to transport the report, that electronic mail content material receives read and saved multiple instances en course by means of ISPs, servers, firewalls, virus checkers and, possibly greater worryingly, unscrupulous ‘bots’ that harvest electronic mail facts. Additionally, IT workforce individuals may be able to get entry to those emails, perhaps using visitors video display units or packet sniffers (that search for specific content material or key words), at any of the factors at which an e mail is probably stored or via which it transits.
It is not just the e-mail content that is at threat either: commonly 30% of emails contain attachments which might be additionally at chance at each and every stage above. Some fax-to-e mail vendors declare to apply protocols that ‘encrypt’ the attachment however in reality all this does is positioned a ‘wrapper’ round that record which if decrypted means the unauthorized celebration has the complete file intact.
However, maximum fax-to-electronic mail vendors use unencrypted emails which can be easily intercepted through unauthorized parties, once in a while with malicious intent. The outcomes are critical and may result in huge fines, lack of clients and, in all likelihood, commercial enterprise failure.
Penalties
The present day consequences for HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) violations are $25,000 to $1.5million, depending on the scale and nature of the violation. Furthermore, an man or woman who knowingly discloses in my view identifiable fitness statistics can also face a criminal penalty of $50,000 and a one-12 months imprisonment. Many providers do accept as true with they agree to the modern day HIPAA encryption policies however in truth they’ll handiest be ‘compliant’ in a completely restricted set of instances, which require excessive levels of IT support