About HIPAA Compliancy

HIPAA & E-Mail Encryption

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), was the result of efforts by the Clinton Administration and congressional health-care reform proponents to reform health-care. The goals and objectives of this legislation are to streamline industry inefficiencies, reduce paperwork, make it easier to detect and prosecute fraud and abuse and enable workers of all professions to change jobs, even if they (or family members) had pre-existing medical conditions.

The HIPAA legislation had four primary objectives:

1. Assure health insurance portability by eliminating job-lock due to pre-existing medical conditions 
2. Reduce health-care fraud and abuse 
3. Enforce standards for health information 
4. Guarantee security and privacy of health information

The Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information are designed to help guarantee privacy and confidentiality of patient medical records. These new Standards for Privacy are quite extensive. Health-care providers, insurers, and employers should review this rule and its requirements in great detail with the intent to update and replace any current internal guidelines in order to insure HIPAA compliance.

A significant part of this compliance is the ability to securely transmit patient data in order to maintain the patient's privacy.  SoftClan e-cryptor & CenturionMail are easy and inexpensive enough for an entire organization to be able to quickly and easily comply with this part of HIPAA.  This is the reason e-cryptor and CenturionMail have been selected by a number of major companies in the health-care industry as their solution of choice for HIPAA compliance.

Why E-mail Encryption is Important for HIPAA compliance

While most people recognize that patient confidentiality is important, most patients' records and data sent by email are not protected by encryption. Why? Mostly because existing encryption programs are difficult to use and proprietary. If you want to send an encrypted email you need to be concerned if the recipient has the software to decrypt it! This often means an exchange of numerous emails determining how the sensitive information can be sent - and usually results in frustration and giving up.

It also means that most sensitive emails are being sent without any protection at all, even though this does not protect the patient's privacy and it is a well known fact that many other people could be reading them. As Microsoft says, sending an un-encrypted email is like shouting in a crowded room. Yet most of the time, nothing is being done to protect sensitive information. 

This is why we created SoftClan e-cryptor. The product is unique in that it offers you both powerful protection as well as ease-of-use. Encrypted files are self-decrypting! Your encrypted email recipients need nothing to decrypt the file except the password. E-cryptor is also perfect for encrypting files and folders because you never have to worry about having the software installed to decrypt them. This is particularly helpful if you want to encrypt files - including backup files of patients' records - on removable media. You can decrypt them on any system, even a system that doesn't have e-cryptor installed.

Minimum System Requirements:

• IBM-PC or 100% compatible:
• Windows 9x/2000/NT 4.0/ME/XP
• 4 MB Hard Disk Space.
• 4 MB RAM.
• CD ROM Drive (boxed version).