Is Skype HIPAA Compliant and Have You Updated Your BA Agreements?
This week we had an interesting discussion on Twitter about whether Skype was HIPAA Compliant or not? Well, there is a simple answer to this one, No. Wait, why not? Well, they encrypt the data stream using 256-bit encryption, it’s convenient because people are quite...
Heartbleed and HIPAA
On April 7th, the news hit the wire that there is a serious bug in the OpenSSL program – one of the most popular cryptography programs out there. This bug allowed information normally protected by an SSL/TLS license (a type of encryption) to be compromised. The...
Is it a breach, or not?
This week we had an interesting question come in. One of our clients was copied by a general agent in a response to an application for health insurance. This message contained ePHI that wasn’t encrypted. Was it a breach? What does that mean for the agents? Does the...
HIPAA and Your Contract Employees
This week we are dealing with contract employees or independent contractors, either of which are usually paid by 1099. (Note: this does not mean that if they are given a 1099, they are an independent contractor – that is a whole different discussion.) One of our...