Is Office 365 Hipaa Compliant

Office 365 hipaa compliance configuration.

Is office 365 hipaa compliant. Strive to maintain least privileged access from the beginning of your office 365 implementation. Lately we ve been discussing in the office whether certain cloud based solutions are hipaa compliant or not. The adoption of microsoft office 365 is widespread.

Office 365 by microsoft is the brand name its chosen as it moves its services such as email storage and chat into the cloud. For the purposes of this post we will focus on the email component of office 365. A common concern in the healthcare industry is that using office 365 and teams exposes an organization to hipaa violations.

As always when pressed with legalese consult with a lawyer with expertise in hipaa compliance. It complies with the hipaa business associate agreement and meets the breach notification requirements of arra hitech the international organization for standardization 27001 federal information security management act eu safe harbor eu model clauses and the data processing. Tools such as excel word powerpoint onenote publisher access and outlook continue to be the leading solutions businesses use.

The vendor recommends that all companies establish a set of procedures and policies to help their personnel use office 365 in a way that supports compliance. Written from an auditor s perspective this whitepaper addresses the area of office 365 enterprise it security compliance for hipaa. While all appropriate privacy and security controls have been implemented by microsoft to ensure that office 365 can be used by hipaa covered entities while remaining compliant with hipaa and the hitech act use of office 365 does not guarantee compliance even if a baa has been obtained from microsoft.

The truth is office 365 and teams can be easily. Audit logs are available with office 365 business essentials and office 365 business premium so both of these packages can be hipaa compliant. Office 365 meets many of the compliance regulation requirements for healthcare organizations around the globe.

Office 365 hipaa best practices. Office 365 business is not a hipaa compliant package as hipaa requires audit logs to be created and maintained and this option is not available with office 365 business. Is office 365 hipaa compliant.