Healthcare companies are constantly facing challenges due to the complex and evolving nature of healthcare data management and privacy policies. Patient data breaches doubled in 2023, costing healthcare companies their reputations and millions in financial penalties.
What Are HIPAA Requirements for Digital Assets?
HIPAA requires that any person, institution, and related service providers (like a digital asset management system) must have policies and practices in place to safeguard patient health information (PHI).
How Does PhotoShelter Help Healthcare Brands Comply with HIPAA Regulations?
PhotoShelter for Brands is designed with security as a top priority. Our flexible permissions capabilities allow you to keep assets locked down for private access so that you can manage your library in a HIPAA-compliant manner. Our healthcare clients trust us with their sensitive data for this very reason.
Here are the ways that PhotoShelter supports supports HIPAA compliance so you can protect your patient data:
User Permission Settings Help You Maintain PHI Confidentiality
Assets stored within PhotoShelter can be set to private viewing that does not allow them to be viewed externally. These detailed permissions allow you to use PhotoShelter in a HIPAA-compliant manner.
PhotoShelter helps you maintain HIPAA compliance by following the required protections of The Security Rule, which establishes standards for the protection of health information that is held or transferred in electronic form, which is known as e-PHI.
PhotoShelter Conducts Risk Analysis and Management to Improve Security Measures
PhotoShelter conducts an annual risk analysis of our systems to:
- Evaluate the likelihood and impact of potential risks to data in our system
- Implement appropriate security measures to address the risks identified in the risk analysis
- Document the chosen security measures and, where required, the rationale for adopting those measures, and
- Maintain continuous, reasonable, and appropriate security protections, which are explained in further detail below.
PhotoShelter Maintains Administrative Safeguards to Protect Your Data
Security Management Process: PhotoShelter maintains a security management process. The documentation for our security measures can be found on our proprietary network and security statement.
Security Personnel: PhotoShelter maintains a data security team, led by Kathy Carter, our Chief Technology Officer, who is responsible for developing and implementing our security policies and procedures. These policies and procedures are regularly updated to respond to industry changes and threat management.
- Information Access Management: PhotoShelter’s system is built with SSO and detailed usage rights management, ensuring that customers who are covered entities are able to limit the use of any materials stored within PhotoShelter to only those people who require access. We rely on our customers to ensure that the materials they are storing in PhotoShelter are shared with the required privacy settings according to their internal HIPAA policies.
- Evaluation: PhotoShelter performs regular assessments of how well our security policies and procedures meet the requirements of the Security Rule. We re-evaluate our controls during company-wide audits with Withum+, as well as annual PCI-DSS audits. Both audits have frameworks with similar requirements to SOC2 type audits.
Physical Safeguards for Data Protection
- Facility Access Control: All PhotoShelter Data Storage facilities limit access to only authorized individuals in 24×7 guarded facilities with biometrics, mantraps and video surveillance systems
- Workstation and Device Security: PhotoShelter has industry standard or better policies for desktops and mobile devices, as well as a clean-desk policy.
Technical Safeguards for Data Protection
- Access Control: PhotoShelter’s single sign-on feature (SSO), centralized user management, and strong sharing, security and reporting tools ensure that only authorized persons access e-PHI. Data at rest in our system is protected via AES256x2 or better encryption. PhotoShelter uses a default Zero Trust security profile to authenticate users, and can be integrated into your organization’s SSO to ensure that access is granted to the correct people. “Zero Trust” is a strategic approach to cyber security that secures data within an organization by requiring verification from users at every stage of a digital interaction.
- Audit Controls: PhotoShelter includes activity logs which will allow customers who are covered entities to record and examine access and other activity in any systems that include e-PHI.
- Integrity Controls: We recommend that our customers implement a firewall or “air gap” between their PHI systems and marketing tools like PhotoShelter to help ensure that e-PHI is protected in the primary systems where it is housed.
- Transmission Security: PhotoShelter guards against unauthorized access to e-PHI that is being transmitted through our network with data encryption. Data in transit is protected via TLS 1.2 or 1.3 encryption.
University of Maryland Medical System Trusts PhotoShelter for HIPAA Compliance
When UMMS Product Manager, Chris Lewkovich, built the system’s media library, security was top of mind.
“The fact that we can completely lock down our site (only we know who’s coming, who’s going), grant access for certain things, and most importantly prevent the outside world from seeing a lot of our assets is crucial because we’re in the healthcare industry. I know I can sleep better at night knowing that those tools are in place.”
Chris Lewkovich, UMMS PRODUCT MANAGER
The creative team works closely with the legal, marketing and media relations teams to ensure they have all necessary rights and permissions from patients before they share their stories.
“Patients dictate how they want their stories to be shared,” explains Mike. “If they have any restrictions we document those.”
The team only shares approved assets across the system, and they remind everyone to reach out if they have any doubt that an image should be included in a campaign. Read UMMS’s full success story with PhotoShelter here.
Learn Why Top Healthcare Brands Trust PhotoShelter
HIPAA-compliant software like PhotoShelter is crucial for healthcare companies to protect patient data, maintain legal compliance, mitigate risks, preserve their reputation, facilitate secure data exchange, ensure business continuity, and avoid hefty fees.
Want to learn more about how PhotoShelter helps your healthcare company protect patient data in a HIPAA-compliant manner? Book a call with us today.
