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Top 5 HIPAA-Compliant Hosting Providers

Which Platforms to Trust in 2023?

In healthcare IT since 2005, ScienceSoft helps healthcare providers and medical software companies choose optimal HIPAA-compliant hosting to build highly secure IT environments for storing PHI.

Top 5 HIPAA-Compliant Hosting Providers - ScienceSoft
Top 5 HIPAA-Compliant Hosting Providers - ScienceSoft

HIPAA-Compliant Hosting: Brief Overview

The key goal of HIPAA-compliant hosting is to help healthcare organizations store and process PHI in an IT environment secured with all the physical, administrative, and technical safeguards required by HIPAA.

However, choosing a reliable hosting platform often turns out to be complicated, as currently there is no official HIPAA certification program that would prove a vendor’s compliance with the regulation.

With seasoned regulatory consultants on board, ScienceSoft helps businesses in healthcare choose the most optimal hosting providers that fully meet the HIPAA requirements. Our software engineers are also ready to conduct secure migration of your legacy systems to the selected platforms.

What to Look for in a HIPAA-Compliant Hosting Provider

Below, ScienceSoft’s healthcare IT consultants share the baseline safeguards needed to enable integrity, confidentiality, and availability of PHI as required by HIPAA. A reliable HIPAA-compliant hosting provider should be ready to sign a business associate agreement (BAA) and ensure the following:

Administrative safeguards

  1. Security management: cybersecurity risk analysis, risk mitigation and incident response plans.
  2. HIPAA contingency plan with policies and procedures on data backups, disaster recovery, emergency mode operations.
  3. Workforce management: authorization and supervision of a provider’s employees, relevant termination procedures for employees leaving the organization.
  1. Workforce training: promoting security awareness among all workforce members.
  2. Ongoing evaluation of security policies and procedures implementation.

Technical safeguards

  1. Access control: unique user identification, password management, emergency access procedures, automatic logoff.
  2. Comprehensive audit logging and activity monitoring.
  1. Encryption of data at rest and in transit, encryption key management.
  2. Integrity controls: prompt detection of security breaches and protective measures against data alteration or destruction in an unauthorized manner.

Physical safeguards

  1. Dedicated (highly isolated) hosting environments for the customers that require HIPAA compliance.
  2. Restricted access & physical security for all servers.
  1. Policies and procedures governing the movement of devices and electronic storage media, records of facility modifications.

MD, healthcare IT consultant at ScienceSoft with 20+ years of experience

According to HIPAA regulations, organizations that provide facilities for PHI storage are considered business associates and must implement the applicable safeguards to protect PHI.

All the hosting companies presented below provide HIPAA-compliant hosting environment and are ready to sign a standard business associate agreement (BAA). Still, it is a customer’s responsibility to configure the platforms correctly in full compliance with HIPAA rules.

Top 5 Leading HIPAA-Compliant Hosting Providers

Atlantic.net

Description

A SOC 2- and SOC 3- certified, HIPAA- and HITECH-audited provider offering cloud computing and hosting services since 1994.

  • Dedicated Windows and Linux hosting packages, secure cloud hosting and storage, Microsoft SQL, MySQL, and PostgreSQL database hosting, and WordPress hosting.
  • Content delivery network with 7 data centers, sub-100 ms latency.
  • Web Application Firewall (WAF) with customizable security rules, anti-malware protection, MFA.
  • Intrusion prevention system (IPS) that enables network monitoring, detection of anomalies, packet logging, real-time traffic analytics, and quick vulnerabilities patching.
  • DoS, DDoS, DrDoS protection.
  • Automated encryption of data using NSA-approved Advanced Encryption Standard 256-bit (AES-256).

Pricing

Pricing is available by request.

Microsoft Azure

DESCRIPTION

An ISO 27001-certified cloud hosting provider that holds CSA STAR Certification and CSA STAR Attestation, FedRAMP High Provisional Authorization, and aligns with NIST CSF.

  • Content delivery network with 160+ data centers.
  • Data backup and disaster recovery services.
  • Network security groups and a firewall for traffic filtering.
  • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to manage user permissions at a granular level.
  • Audit log tracking.
  • Automated encryption of data using AES-256 standard.
  • Azure API for FHIR that enables storing health records in FHIR format.

Pricing

Pricing is available by request.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

DESCRIPTION

AWS aligns its HIPAA risk management program with FedRAMP and NIST 800-53 and offers a range of services certified under HITRUST CSF.

  • Content delivery network with 125+ data centers.
  • AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery for secure data replication.
  • Network and application protection services ensuring data security at the host, network, and application levels.
  • Identity and access management systems with granular permission control.
  • Automated data encryption using AES-256-bit standard.
  • MFA methods: FIDO security keys, virtual authenticator apps, and hardware tokens supporting time-based one-time password (TOTP) algorithm.

Pricing

Pricing is available by request.

Liquid Web

DESCRIPTION

A SOC 1-, 2-, 3-certified, HIPAA- and HITECH-audited vendor offering fully managed hosting services since 1997.

  • VPS hosting, dedicated Windows and Linux hosting, secure cloud hosting and storage, database hosting, WordPress hosting.
  • Content delivery network with 10 data centers.
  • Hardware firewall.
  • Intrusion prevention and detection systems included in all HIPAA-compliant hosting plans.
  • DDoS protection.

Pricing

Pricing is available by request.

Rackspace

DESCRIPTION

A multicloud solution provider that serves more than a half of the Fortune 100 companies. The vendor holds HITRUST and HITRUST CSF certifications and is ready to provide dedicated hosting for HIPAA-covered entities under BAA.

  • Content delivery network with 40 data centers.
  • Single-tenant firewalls for dedicated hosting environments.
  • Extended SSL encryption.
  • Compliance with PCI DSS data security requirements.
  • Intrusion prevention system (IPS), threat intelligence feeds, and malware protection.
  • PDP reports generation to track data usage and protection measures.

Pricing

Pricing is available by request.

Adopt a HIPAA-Compliant Hosting Platform With Experts

With a track record of over 150 successful healthcare IT projects, ScienceSoft is ready to help you choose the most optimal hosting solution and perform secure end-to-end migration of workloads with PHI.

Consulting on HIPAA-compliant hosting

ScienceSoft’s experts will help you choose the most fitting HIPAA-compliant hosting and a cost-efficient pricing plan, create a robust deployment or migration strategy, and deliver a detailed implementation roadmap for it.

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Migration to a HIPAA-compliant hosting environment

Let ScienceSoft’s professionals take care of your entire migration process. We will assess your current IT infrastructure and hosting needs, securely migrate the workloads with PHI, and properly configure the chosen hosting environment in full compliance with the HIPAA rule.

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About ScienceSoft

ScienceSoft is an IT consulting and software development company headquartered in McKinney, TX. In healthcare IT since 2005, ScienceSoft provides a full range of HIPAA compliance services. Our mission is to drive your project success in spite of time and budget constraints, as well as changing requirements. Holding ISO 9001, ISO 13485, and ISO 27001 certifications, we ensure mature quality of our services and complete security of the data entrusted to us during cooperation.