HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) establishes national standards for protecting sensitive patient health information (PHI) in the United States. HIPAA's Security Rule, Privacy Rule, and Breach Notification Rule impose strict requirements on how organizations safeguard, access, transmit, and store protected health information.

Violations carry civil penalties up to $2.1 million per violation category per year, criminal penalties, and mandatory breach notification requirements that can devastate customer trust and brand reputation.

Any organization that creates, receives, maintains, or transmits protected health information — as a covered entity or business associate — must comply with HIPAA. This includes healthcare providers, health plans, clearinghouses, and any technology vendor that handles PHI on their behalf.

Health & Life Sciences — Healthtech, biotech, telemedicine platforms, EHR/EMR systems, clinical trial platforms, and digital health applications are directly subject to HIPAA.

Technology & Software — SaaS companies providing infrastructure, analytics, communication, or data management services to healthcare organizations must comply as business associates.

Financial Services — Companies processing healthcare payments, insurance claims, or health savings account data.

Retail & Ecommerce — Health and wellness ecommerce platforms handling customer health data (pharmacy, supplements, telehealth marketplaces).

Audited Compliance — HIPAA requires detailed documentation of administrative, physical, and technical safeguards. Risk analyses, policies, workforce training records, and access logs must be maintained and readily available for OCR investigations.

Risk Visibility — HIPAA mandates a comprehensive risk analysis (45 CFR 164.308(a)(1)) that identifies threats and vulnerabilities to PHI. This analysis must be ongoing, not a one-time exercise, and must inform risk management decisions.

Policy & Access — HIPAA requires role-based access controls, workforce training, sanctions policies, and documentation of minimum necessary access to PHI. Access reviews, workforce clearance procedures, and termination processes are audited closely.

Vendor Risk — Every business associate that handles PHI must be governed by a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and must demonstrate HIPAA-compliant security practices. Vendor breaches are the organization's liability.

BYOD Security — Mobile devices accessing PHI must be encrypted, remotely wipeable, and governed by documented policies. BYOD in healthcare settings is common and creates persistent compliance exposure.

Insider Risks — Healthcare organizations face significant insider threat risk. Workforce members with access to PHI must be monitored, trained, and subject to sanctions for unauthorized access.

Cross-Framework Complexity — Organizations pursuing HIPAA alongside SOC 2, ISO 27001, or HITRUST face overlapping controls that can be cross-mapped to reduce duplication.

Trust & Transparency — Demonstrating HIPAA compliance builds trust with healthcare partners, patients, and enterprise buyers evaluating healthtech solutions.

Agency operates your HIPAA compliance program as a fully managed, continuously enforced system — from risk analysis through OCR investigation readiness.

Continuous Safeguard Enforcement — Agency's forward-deployed AI agents enforce HIPAA's administrative, physical, and technical safeguards across your cloud infrastructure, identity providers, endpoint security, and application layer. Encryption, access controls, audit logging, and transmission security are validated continuously.

Comprehensive Risk Analysis — Agency maintains a living risk analysis that identifies threats and vulnerabilities to PHI in real time. Risk scores update dynamically based on control status, infrastructure changes, and threat intelligence — satisfying HIPAA's requirement for ongoing risk assessment.

PHI Access Governance — Agency monitors and enforces minimum necessary access to PHI across identity providers, EHR systems, and cloud environments. Workforce access reviews, privilege changes, and termination deprovisioning are tracked and documented automatically.

Business Associate Management — Agency assesses and monitors business associates continuously, ensuring BAAs are in place, vendor security posture meets HIPAA requirements, and vendor risk findings are documented and remediated.

Breach Notification Readiness — Agency MDR provides detection and response coverage with HIPAA-compliant incident documentation. When a security event occurs, Agency generates the documentation required for breach assessment and notification within HIPAA's 60-day notification window.

Cross-Framework Efficiency — Armada PSCO maps HIPAA safeguards to SOC 2, ISO 27001, HITRUST, and GDPR controls. Work done for HIPAA carries forward to every additional framework.