How Online Mail Services Ensure Compliance with HIPAA & GDPR?
How Online Mail Services Ensure Compliance with HIPAA & GDPR?
These days, it’s common to send sensitive documents like medical records, legal contracts, and personal documents online. The convenience of technology to send these documents is widely accepted. However, these documents must be sent with confidentiality while complying with legal frameworks like HIPAA in the U.S and GDPR in the U.K.
How do services thatmail documents onlineprotect your private information? In the next paragraphs, we will summarize the legal and administrative protections that senders of documents must follow.
Basics: HIPAA and GDPR
Before exploring how platforms comply, it’s important to know what these regulations involve.
HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)
As defined, it applies to and is relevant to entities within the U. S that manage and service protected information and personal health records (PHI). Some of the HIPAA mandates include:
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
Applies to organizations dealing with data belonging to EU residents. Some of the pillars that they embrace include:
It is evident from the frameworks mentioned above that both legal frameworks would, in one way or another, restrict data handlers.
1. End-to-End Encryption
The first layer of compliance isend-to-end encryption. This ensures that documents are:
Services that follow this encryption standard prevent unauthorized access during every step of the mailing process.
2. Access Controls and User Authentication
HIPAA and GDPR both require restricting access to sensitive and confidential data. Platforms that are compliant implement:
These controls ensure that only authorized users can send, access, or track documents.
3. Audit Trails and Activity Logs
Many compliant platforms offer detailed audit trails and records:
These logs are critical for demonstrating accountability in case of audits, disputes, or investigations.
4. Data Residency and Retention Policies
GDPR law requires data on specific users to be stored in certain territories (usually in the EU), while HIPAA requires health data to be stored safely and for no longer than necessary periods. Compliant services enable users to:
5. Business Associate Agreements (BAAs)
In order to comply with HIPAA, the platform is required to sign a Business Associate Agreement with the healthcare entity or the sender. This document protects the healthcare entity, confirming that the service provider will handle health data with the utmost legal secrecy.
Final Thoughts
Using a mailing service that is HIPAA and GDPR compliant is no longer optional. If your documents contain personal, medical, and legal data, it is imperative to use a compliant service. These various platforms ensure compliance with all aspects of the service, whether it is encryption, identity authentication, legal agreements, or audits.
As a first step, companies should confirm the BAA policy and privacy protocol of the vendor, then, if necessary, find the vendor whose compliance certificates align with those of the niche and region.
