LuxSci Achieves HITRUST Certification for Third Consecutive Term

Business Solutions, Company Announcements, Industry News
LuxSci
October 21, 2024

We’re thrilled to announce our latest data security achievements here at LuxSci! Once again, LuxSci has achieved HITRUST CSF® certification, following a multi-step process that includes a deep assessment, validation, and quality assurance analysis for a company and its products. Our 2024-26 certification marks the third consecutive time that LuxSci has received the 2-year HITRUST certification, meeting the rigorous standards set by the HITRUST CSF framework.

In related news, LuxSci, which is GDPR compliant, has also renewed its US-EU Data Privacy Framework (DPF) certification for the next 12 months. According to the certification, U.S. companies that participate in the DPF provide adequate levels of security for personal data transfers received from the EU within the scope of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This renewal enables us to support customers in Europe, while ensuring we meet the highest data protection standards for cross-border data transfers. For customers that do business in the EU and UK, LuxSci ensures data privacy is upheld in compliance with regulations.

Our latest security certifications are a testament to our continuous and unrelenting commitment to delivering the highest levels of data protection for healthcare communications. This includes securing email, marketing, text, forms and hosting—while also improving patient engagement and outcomes with the use of protected health information (PHI) in communications.

Why HITRUST Certification Matters in Healthcare

In the healthcare industry, protecting sensitive patient data is not just a legal requirement—it’s an ethical responsibility and an imperative for any company or organization in existence today. While HIPAA compliance establishes a strong baseline for safeguarding patient information, HITRUST certification takes data protection a step further. The HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) integrates multiple regulatory standards, including HIPAA, to provide a comprehensive approach to information security, privacy, and risk management.

For healthcare organizations—and larger companies and enterprises, in particular—partnering with a HITRUST-certified provider like LuxSci provides peace of mind. You can trust that our security controls not only meet HIPAA standards but also go beyond them to address the latest industry challenges and emerging threats—we do this constantly, year after year.

How HITRUST Enhances Data Security Beyond HIPAA

HIPAA establishes the essential requirements for securing protected health information (PHI), putting a solid, but basic foundation in place. HITRUST certification is recognized for going beyond the basics. Here’s how:

Comprehensive Approach to Risk Management: HITRUST CSF combines various security, privacy, and regulatory standards such as NIST, ISO, and PCI-DSS, providing a more robust framework for managing risks in healthcare.
Continuous Monitoring and Improvement: HITRUST requires organizations to continuously monitor and improve their security measures, ensuring that their defenses evolve alongside new threats and new technologies.
Tailored Security Controls: HITRUST’s framework scales based on the size, complexity, and nature of the organization, offering flexibility while maintaining a high standard of security.
Third-Party Validation: Achieving HITRUST certification involves rigorous third-party audits, which demonstrate that an organization’s security practices are not only in place but have been thoroughly validated.

The Benefits of HITRUST Certification for Healthcare

For healthcare providers, payers, and suppliers, the advantages of partnering with a HITRUST-certified organization like LuxSci are clear:

Streamlined Compliance: HITRUST certification simplifies compliance with multiple regulatory frameworks, reducing the burden of managing multiple audits and certifications.
Enhanced Patient and Customer Trust: By choosing a HITRUST-certified partner, you show patients, partners, and regulators that your organization prioritizes the highest levels of security.
Future-Proofing: HITRUST ensures that you’re not just up to date with today’s standards but prepared for future regulatory requirements and security challenges as they arise.

At LuxSci, we remain committed to delivering secure, scalable, and flexible HIPAA-compliant healthcare communications solutions that our clients can depend on for the highest levels of data protection.

If you’d like to learn more about LuxSci’s secure healthcare communications solutions—and how we elevate your healthcare data protection to the next level—contact us today!

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What Is a Cyber Risk Assessment?

March 19, 2025
Pete Wermter

As cyber threats become both more frequent and sophisticated, it’s essential for healthcare companies to strengthen their cybersecurity posture and safeguard the electronic protected health information (ePHI) within their IT ecosystems and communications. This begins with a comprehensive cyber risk assessment that spans infrastructure, applications and communications.

A cyber risk assessment enables healthcare companies to focus their attention on the IT areas that need the most improvement, allowing them to be more effective in their threat mitigation efforts. This not only reduces the chances of cyber attacks but helps them align with HIPAA’s guidelines and maintain the operational integrity required to best serve their patients and customers.

Let’s discuss why it’s vital that healthcare companies conduct thorough cyber threat risk assessments and the steps your organization can take to carry one out effectively.

Why Are Cyber Risk Assessments Crucial for Healthcare Organizations?

In an increasingly digitized healthcare landscape, conducting regular risk assessments is essential for companies of all sizes, in every industry. For healthcare companies, charged with protecting patient data, it’s especially critical and often a compliance requirement. Electronic PHI, which contains details of an individual’s health history, including current conditions, past illnesses and procedures, prescribed medicine, etc., is very sensitive in nature, so healthcare companies must go the extra mile to ensure its protection in transit and at rest.

Performing a cyber threat risk assessment is the first step to achieving this critical requirement. A risk assessment allows you to identify all of the ePHI within your business, understand the threats it faces, determine gaps in your cybersecurity posture, and, most importantly, mitigate them.

Additionally, from a compliance perspective, conducting regular risk assessments is a key requirement of HIPAA’s Security Rule. Consequently, healthcare companies must carry out periodic risk assessments if they want to comply with HIPAA regulations, and avoid the consequences of non-compliance. A risk assessment provides documented evidence, to auditors, supply-chain partners, and others, that you are conscious of security concerns and have taken the proper steps to mitigate them.

How Do You Conduct A Cyber Risk Assessment?

Now that we’ve discussed their importance, let’s turn our attention to how healthcare organizations can conduct effective cyber risk assessments.

Identify Assets

The first, and, arguably, most important step of a risk assessment is identifying your organization’s digital assets, which include:

Hardware: endpoint devices (desktops, laptops, smartphones, etc.), servers, network equipment, medical equipment, etc.
Systems, infrastructure and applications: operating systems, cloud services, etc.
Data, i.e., ePHI

Now, the reason asset identification could be considered the most crucial part of a risk assessment is that a healthcare organization‘s security teams can’t protect what they aren’t aware of!

Consequently, weeding out instances of “shadow IT”, i.e., the use of applications and/or systems without the approval of a company’s IT department is essential. Otherwise, you could have cases in which ePHI is used in applications, resides on databases, and so on – without it being adequately safeguarded.

Once you’ve identified your assets, you need to classify them: based on their sensitivity and potential impact if a security incident were to occur.

Identify Vulnerabilities and Threats

Having successfully catalogued your assets, you must now establish the factors most likely to compromise their security. This first means pinpointing the vulnerabilities in your IT ecosystem, which could include:

A lack of encryption, or weak standards
Lax access controls
Weak password policies
Lack of monitoring and logging
Outdated software (with some no longer being supported by its vendor)
End-of-life hardware
Infrequent back-ups
Unverified or insecure third-party vendors

When you have a better understanding of these vulnerabilities, which are called attack vectors, you can then determine the most likely threats to ePHI based on the gaps in your security posture. These include:

Data breaches or exposure
Malware, e.g., ransomware, viruses, spyware, etc.
Social engineering phishing
Insider threats (whether through malice or human error)
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks

Fortunately, there is an array of scanning tools that will help you find your cybersecurity vulnerabilities. As far as understanding the main threats to your sensitive patient and customer data, you need to keep up with the latest in threat intelligence. Cybercriminals are always devising new ways to infiltrate healthcare organizations’ networks, so your security teams must remain aware of emerging cyber threats.

Risk Prioritization

So, now you have catalogued your assets, determined their vulnerabilities, and identified the threats. However, implementing cyber threat mitigation measures requires resources – namely time and money – so you must prioritize which risks to mitigate first, based on their likelihood and impact.

First, how likely is a threat to exploit a vulnerability? Healthcare organizations typically determine this through existing threat databases, such as MITRE, as well as keeping up-to-date on the latest threat intelligence and determining how it pertains to your company.

Secondly, evaluate the potential impact, or consequences, of a threat actually manifesting, i.e., a an email breach or a malicious actor successfully pulling off a cyber attack and infiltrating your network. When analyzing the potential impact, consider the financial, operational, reputational, and compliance implications.

Report Findings

At this point, you should report the findings of the risk assessments to your company’s key stakeholders, e.g., upper management, compliance officers, IT management and security, etc. This ensures that decision-makers understand the nature of the top threats facing your organization, their potential business impact, and the urgency of implementing mitigation controls.

This also helps security teams secure the resources they need to bolster their cybersecurity posture accordingly. An additional benefit of this reporting is that it provides an audit trail for compliance efforts, as it demonstrates your efforts to better protect patient and customer data.

Implement Mitigation Measures

Now, we’ve come to the point in the risk assessment process where you act on your due diligence and implement the policies and controls that will better protect patient data and comply with HIPAA guidelines.

Mitigation measures broadly fall into three categories:

Preventive: e.g., encryption, access control, user authentication (e.g., multi-factor authentication (MFA))
Detective: e.g., vulnerability scanning, continuous monitoring
Corrective: e.g., incident response, backups and disaster recovery

A robust cybersecurity posture requires a combination of all three. Your risk assessment may reveal that your organization is strong in one aspect but less so in others, or you may need to bolster your efforts across the board.

Document Your Risk Mitigation Measures

Create a risk mitigation implementation report that details how your organization executed its cyber threat mitigation strategies. This should include:

Affected assets: the parts of your IT infrastructure (servers, databases, etc.) and applications you identified as vulnerable and the severity of their corresponding threats.
Mitigation actions: the specific action(s) undertaken to mitigate cyber threats against the asset, e.g., enhancing encryption standards, strengthening password policies, conducting cyber threat awareness training, etc.
Technical details: where applicable, such as a particular update applied to an application, how a system has been configured, which new software solution has been deployed, and so on.
Post-mitigation risk assessment: re-evaluate the risk level of each asset after the implementation of new security measures.
Monitoring and compliance: detail how the organization will monitor the efficacy of the implemented measures, as well as how your enhanced controls and policies align with compliance standards (e.g., HIPAA, NIST, HITRUST, etc).

As with the report for stakeholders after the initial stages of the assessment, the risk mitigation implementation report also leaves a compliance audit trail, which will become all the more important when the proposed changes to the HIPAA Security Rule come into effect.

Continuous Monitoring and Review

As detailed in your risk mitigation implementation report, you must continuously monitor your IT infrastructure to assess the effectiveness of your newly implemented policies and controls. This process also mitigates cyber risk, in and of itself, as it provides fewer opportunities for malicious actors to breach your network: you’ll have systems in place to alert you of suspicious activity.

Additionally, you must regularly reassess your organization’s cyber risks as new threats emerge, your IT ecosystem evolves, or if you succumb to a cyber attack.

How Often Should You Conduct Cyber Risk Assessments?

Healthcare organizations should carry out a cyber risk assessment at least once a year, with respect to time, or when they make changes to their IT infrastructure. With the proposed changes to the HIPAA Security Rule on the horizon, now is an opportune time to conduct a risk assessment and measure your cyber threat readiness against the new stipulations of the soon-to-be-updated Security Rule.

Also, as alluded to above, if you suffer a security incident, you must conduct a post-breach assessment, once the threat is contained, to establish how a malicious actor breached your network – and how to prevent it from happening again.

How LuxSci Helps Mitigate Cyber Risk in the Healthcare Industry

With more than 20 years of experience, LuxSci has developed the required expertise to make secure communication solutions tailored to meet the stringent cyber risk mitigation needs of the healthcare industry.

LuxSci’s suite of HIPAA-compliant communication solutions includes:

Secure Email: HIPAA-compliant email solutions for executing highly scalable, high volume email campaigns that include PHI – millions of emails per month.
Secure Forms: Securely and efficiently collect and store ePHI without compromising security or compliance – for onboarding new patients and customers and gathering intelligence for personalization.
Secure Marketing: proactively reach your patients and customers with HIPAA compliant email marketing campaigns for increased engagement, lead generation and sales.
Secure Text Messaging: enable access to ePHI and other sensitive information directly to mobile devices via regular SMS text messages.

Interested in discovering more about how LuxSci can help you protect your patient’s ePHI, mitigate cyber risk, and ensure HIPAA compliance for your email and communications? Contact us today!

What Are the Implications of the Proposed Changes to the HIPAA Security Rule?

March 14, 2025
Pete Wermter

With the recent announcement of proposed changes to the HIPAA Security Rule, by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), healthcare providers, payers, suppliers, and organizations of all sizes will have to tighten up their cybersecurity practices. In some cases, considerably.

However, with the announcement being so recent (and there not even yet being a clear timeline for when companies will have to implement the changes), it’s all too easy for organizations to view the proposed amendments as a challenge that’s far off in the future.

However, even at this early stage, the proposed changes to the Security Rule require careful consideration and important conversations. Soon, healthcare companies will have to implement or improve a series of cybersecurity controls designed to better safeguard electronic protected health information (ePHI).

In light of this, in this post, we’ll discuss some of the most important practical considerations that healthcare organizations will have to contend with to maintain HIPAA compliance when the proposed changes to the Security Rule go through.

What are the Key Proposed Changes to the HIPAA Security Rule?

First, a refresher on what the proposed changes to the Security Rule are:

More Comprehensive Risk Management: healthcare organizations must conduct more frequent risk assessments to identify, categorize, and mitigate threats to sensitive patient data.
Stricter Documentation and Evidence Retention Policies: similarly, stronger documentation and record-keeping practices to ensure organizations can demonstrate compliance with security requirements.

This includes:

Maintaining detailed records of how they assess threats and implement safeguard security controls (e.g., encryption policies, access controls, etc).
Retaining detailed audit logs of system access, data modifications, and security events, as well as reports from security solutions, such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems all must be securely stored, retained for a defined period, and made available for audits and compliance reviews.
By the same token, the proposed updates to the Security Rule may extend how long healthcare organizations must retain logs and other security documentation, allowing auditors to review historical compliance efforts in the event of an investigation.

Mandatory Encryption for All ePHI Transmission: healthcare companies will require end-to-end encryption for emails, messages, and data transfers involving ePHI. Like today, this means that patient data must be encrypted in transit, i.e., from one place to another (when collected in a secure form, sent in an email, etc.), and in storage, i.e., where it will reside.
Stronger User Authentication and Identity Verification Requirements: healthcare providers must implement stronger identity access management IAM safeguards, such as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), for employees with access to patient data.
Tighter Third-Party Security Controls: stricter security controls for business associates who have access to the healthcare company’s ePHI. One of the proposed changes to the HIPAA Security Rule is that vendor security audits will be mandatory instead of optional.
Updated Incident Response (IR) and Data Breach Reporting Rules: mandating stricter breach notification timelines for healthcare entities and their business associates, with them being obligated to inform parties affected by a security breach as soon as possible.

What Are The Practical Implications for Healthcare Companies?

So, what will healthcare companies have to do to comply with HIPAA regulations when the proposed changes to the Security Rule go through? Let’s look at the main practical considerations.

Cybersecurity Solution Deployment and Infrastructure Upgrades

Many healthcare companies will have to install (and subsequently, maintain) new IT infrastructure and deploy new cybersecurity tools to strengthen their authentication safeguards (e.g., MFA, Zero Trust, etc.) to meet new HIPAA’s heightened cybersecurity standards.

Expanded Vendor and Third-Party Management

As well as having to deploy new cybersecurity solutions, such as HIPAA compliant email services and continuous monitoring tools, healthcare organizations will have to be more diligent in their oversight of their third-party vendors.

Stricter Auditing and Documentation Requirements

In having to provide more details of their risk management practices and maintain real-time logs, healthcare organizations will have to develop processes, policies, and supporting documentation.

Staff Training

Healthcare companies will have to train their staff on the updates of the Security Rule, their implications, how to use the new applications and hardware deployed to harden their security posture, etc.

Increased Management and Administrative Burden

Dealing with proposed changes to the Security Rule is going to require all hands on deck.

Managers and stakeholders are going to make several important strategic decisions; procurement and product managers are going to have to research and purchase new solutions; IT will have to deploy the solutions; and everyone will need to learn how to use them.

With all this in mind, more will be required from everyone within your organization. Employees will be taken away from their work, which could affect the quality of the service provided to patients and customers.

That’s why it’s crucial to be prepared…

How Can You Prepare For the Proposed Changes to the Security Rule?

Conduct risk assessments: pinpoint vulnerabilities within your IT network and the ePHI contained therein. You should conduct risk assessments annually at the very least – or you upgrade your IT infrastructure. In light of the proposed amendments to the Security Rule, conducting a risk assessment to identify the security gaps in your network against the proposed rule changes is essential.
Evaluate your existing email and communication platforms: to accommodate the upcoming changes to the Security Rule, many healthcare companies will need to upgrade to HIPAA compliant email communication solutions, as well as encrypted databases for securely storing ePHI at rest. Deploying an email services solution designed for the healthcare industry, like LuxSci, best ensures compliance with encryption and the other new requirements of the Security Rule.
Improve your organization’s incident response planning and documentation processes: develop all the required documentation to track the movement of patient data, and refine your processes for handling security events. This also encompasses training your staff on your new security policies and procedures.
Improve your organization’s cybersecurity posture: by implementing end-to-end encryption, network segmentation, zero-trust security infrastructure, data loss protection (DLP) protocols, and other measures that will better protect patient data.
Perform vendor due diligence: ensure your third-party service providers meet HIPAA compliance standards and that you have a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) in place with each vendor that can access your ePHI.

How Luxsci Can Help You Navigate the Proposed Changes to the HIPAA Security Rule

With more than 20 years of experience in delivering best-in-class secure healthcare communication solutions, LuxSci is a trusted partner for healthcare organizations looking to secure their email and digital communications in line with regulatory standards and the industry’s highest security standards.

LuxSci’s suite of HIPAA-compliant solutions includes:

Secure Email: HIPAA-compliant email solutions executing highly scalable email campaigns that include PHI – send millions of emails per month.
Secure Forms: Securely and efficiently collect and store ePHI without compromising security or compliance – for onboarding new patients and customers and gathering intelligence for personalization.
Secure Marketing – proactively reach your patients and customers with HIPAA compliant email marketing campaigns for increased engagement, lead generation and sales.
Secure Text Messaging – enable access to ePHI and other sensitive information directly to mobile devices via regular SMS text messages.

Interested in discovering more about LuxSci can help you get a head start on upgrading your cybersecurity stance to ensure future HIPAA compliance? Contact us today!

What is a SMART Objective in Healthcare Marketing?

March 13, 2025
Erik Kangas

Healthcare marketing objectives typically follow the SMART framework: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals that guide marketing campaigns and patient outreach programs. These structured objectives help healthcare organizations track progress, measure success, and adapt strategies to meet defined targets within budget and regulatory requirements. Clear, well-defined objectives lead to effective resource allocation and higher returns on marketing investments. As a result, marketing teams use this framework to develop campaigns that deliver quantifiable results while maintaining healthcare industry standards and compliance requirements.

SMART Marketing Requirements

The SMART framework provides healthcare organizations with a structured method to develop marketing plans that deliver measurable results. Marketing teams design objectives that meet specific criteria for success, including detailed action plans and performance metrics. Each objective links to broader organizational goals while maintaining healthcare compliance standards. Teams consider market conditions, resource availability, and patient needs when setting these objectives. The framework ensures marketing plans remain focused on achievable outcomes rather than vague aspirations. To track results, organizations review their healthcare marketing objectives quarterly to validate alignment with business goals and adjust targets based on market changes. Marketing teams document their objectives in detail, including baseline metrics, target improvements, and measurement methods to track progress accurately.

SMART objectives help healthcare marketers directly connect marketing activities to measurable patient acquisition outcomes.
Cross-departmental collaboration improves when marketing and relevant teams set out clearly defined objectives.
Healthcare organizations using structured objectives can better demonstrate marketing value to leadership and stakeholders.
Well-documented SMART objectives create marketing accountability while supporting compliance with healthcare regulations.
The framework encourages more efficient resource allocation by requiring measurable outcomes for all marketing investments.

Target Markets and Patient Segments

Marketing teams use demographic data and healthcare utilization patterns to identify target patient populations. They analyze factors like age groups, insurance coverage, medical needs, and geographic location to create focused marketing objectives. This research shapes campaign messaging and channel selection for different patient segments. Teams track response rates across various demographics to refine their targeting strategies. Market segmentation helps organizations allocate marketing resources to the most promising patient groups and service lines. Research includes analyzing patient data from electronic health records, insurance claims, and market surveys to understand healthcare needs and preferences. Teams develop patient personas to guide marketing efforts and create relevant messaging for each segment. They study healthcare consumption patterns, referral sources, and patient journey maps to identify marketing opportunities within each segment.

Budget Planning and Resource Management

Healthcare marketing objectives should include detailed budget planning and resource allocation strategies. This means that teams develop cost projections for different marketing channels and campaign types. They track spending against expected patient acquisition costs and revenue generation. These financial objectives help organizations maintain profitable marketing operations while meeting growth targets. Budget planning includes staff time, technology costs, advertising and lead generation expenses, and marketing content production. Regular financial reviews ensure marketing activities stay within planned spending limits while delivering expected results. Marketing departments calculate return on investment for each campaign type and channel to optimize resource allocation. They maintain detailed cost tracking systems to monitor expenses across all marketing activities. Teams develop contingency plans for budget adjustments based on campaign performance and market changes.

Technology Integration and Digital Marketing

Marketing objectives dictate technology requirements for campaign execution and performance tracking. Teams set goals for website optimization, email deliverability and conversions, social media engagement, and digital ad campaign results. They also plan implementation schedules for new marketing technologies and patient communication tools. These objectives include metrics for online appointment scheduling, patient portal usage, email engagement, and digital content engagement. Organizations track technology adoption rates and return on digital marketing investments. Marketing teams continuously evaluate new healthcare marketing technologies and platforms to improve campaign effectiveness. For example, email marketing platforms that securely transmit protected health information (PHI) can enable greater personalization with more targeted and customized messages. Integration plans are developed for marketing automation tools, email marketing and campaign tools, customer relationship management systems, and analytics platforms. The technical requirements include the necessary data security measures, such as end-to-end encryption, to protect patient information and maintain HIPAA compliance across all digital marketing channels.

Marketing departments can also create automation objectives to nurture leads and improve operational efficiency. Email communication campaigns are created with targeted messages based on patient attributes, health conditions, interests and product needs. Marketing teams must establish protocols for using PHI to personalize patient outreach while maintaining compliance standards. Marketing automation tools help track patient interactions across multiple touchpoints and trigger appropriate follow-up communications. Organizations measure email engagement rates, deliverability, and conversion metrics to evaluate effectiveness. Their teams develop workflow automation systems that reduce manual tasks and improve campaign conversions and ongoing engagement. These automated processes help marketing departments manage larger email volumes while maintaining personalized patient and customer communications.

Campaign Execution and Timeline Management

Healthcare marketing teams create detailed implementation schedules for their objectives. They set specific dates for campaign launches, content creation, and performance reviews. Marketing calendars account for seasonal healthcare needs, annual testing, procedures and plan enrollments, and organizational updates. Teams coordinate marketing activities with other departments, including clinical departments, customer experience teams, operations, IT infrastructure and security, and administrative staff. Project management tools help track progress toward marketing objectives and maintain accountability. Regular timeline reviews allow teams to adjust schedules based on results and changing priorities. Campaign execution plans should also include content development schedules, media placement timelines, and coordination with external marketing vendors. The teams create workflow systems to manage multiple campaigns across different channels and patient segments, and an approval processes is established for marketing campaigns and materials to ensure compliance with healthcare regulations and brand standards.

Performance Analysis and Strategy Refinement

Successful healthcare marketing teams establish systems to measure marketing objective achievements, with their teams tracking key performance indicators through analytics platforms and robust reporting tools. They analyze patient acquisition data, lead generation and conversions, opportunities and revenue growth. This information helps marketing departments identify successful strategies and areas for improvement. Performance analysis includes comparing results against industry benchmarks and competitor performance, as well as their own historical performance. Regular strategy reviews ensure marketing objectives remain aligned with organizational goals and market conditions. Marketing teams should create monthly performance reports, tracking progress toward SMART objectives. The teams should also conduct quarterly reviews of marketing strategies to assess effectiveness and make necessary adjustments. Analysis includes patient satisfaction and engagement metrics, service and product line revenue growth rates, and marketing campaign response rates. Teams use this data to refine future marketing objectives and improve campaign performance.

The Risks of Third-Party Email Integrations for Healthcare Companies

March 10, 2025
Pete Wermter

Today’s healthcare organizations heavily rely on a variety of third-party organizations for a range of services and products. This includes applications (i.e., SaaS solutions), suppliers, partners, and other companies depended upon to serve their patients and customers.

As the healthcare industry evolves, companies will need to increasingly collaborate with external parties, or business associates, which creates several dependencies and risks.

In particular, third-party email platforms are integral to the operations of healthcare companies, and the sensitive nature of protected health information (PHI) contained in email communications raises the stakes exponentially.

This post analyzes the main risks associated with third-party email integrations. From there, we detail the most effective measures for safeguarding your company from the dangers of an insecure integration with an email delivery platform.

What Are The Risks of Third-Party Email Integrations?

Email applications are a pillar of the modern workplace, enabling companies to communicate almost instantly and facilitating greater productivity and efficiency. Email has transformed the speed at which transactions can take place and individuals receive the product or service they’ve purchased.

Consequently, the importance of email communication and the vast amounts of sensitive data it encompasses, makes it a contrast target – or “attack vector” for cybercriminals. Hackers and other malicious actors know that if they can infiltrate an organization’s email system, they have the potential to steal vast amounts of private or proprietary data. Just as alarmingly, they may simply use an insecure email platform as a backdoor into a company’s wider network, assuming greater control over their systems in an effort to maximize their financial gain or inflict maximum damage to an organization.

For healthcare companies with ambitious patient engagement goals, sharing protected health information (PHI) with a reliable third-party email provider is mandatory. Unfortunately, this comes with a litany of risks, which include:

Data Breaches: weak security features in third-party email providers can expose PHI.
Misconfigured Permissions: misconfigurations and a lack of oversight control can result in personnel at third parties having excessive access to PHI.
HIPAA Non-Compliance – if the integration does not support encryption, audit logs and other features mandated by HIPAA, you may drift into non-compliant territory.
Financial Implications: violating HIPAA regulations can result in financial penalties, including fines and compensation to affected parties.
Reputational Damage: companies that fall victim to cyber attacks, especially through negligence, become cautionary tales and case studies for cybersecurity solution vendors. Data exposure that comes from an insecure email platform integration can have disastrous effects on your company’s reputation.

Therefore, mitigating the risks of integrating a third-party email platform into your IT infrastructure, platforms and systems is crucial. This includes customer data platforms (CDP), electronic health record systems (EHR) and revenue cycle management platforms (RCM). Let’s move on to specific strategies on how to do so and, subsequently, better safeguard your organization’s PHI.

How To Mitigate Email Integration Risk

Now that you have a better understanding of the potential risks that come with integrating an insecure third-party email solution into your IT ecosystem, let’s look at risk prevention. Fortunately, several strategies will significantly lower the risk of malicious actors getting their hands on the sensitive patient data under your care. Let’s take a look:

Verify A Third-Party Vendor’s Security Practices

Before sharing PHI with a vendor, ensure they have a strong cybersecurity posture. This makes sure they have measures such as encryption, access control (or identity access management (IAM), and continuous monitoring solutions in place, in addition to conducting regular risk assessments.

Similarly, it’s crucial to research an email provider’s reputation, including how long they’ve been in operation, the companies they count among their clients, and their overall standing within the industry.

Business Associate Agreements (BAAs)

A business associate agreement (BAA) is a legal document that’s required for HIPAA compliance, when sharing PHI with third-party vendors, such as email services. It ensures that both you and the vendor formally agree to comply with HIPAA regulations and your respective responsibilities in protecting patient data.

Without a BAA, the above point about verifying a vendor’s security practices is moot. If they’re not willing to sign a BAA, their security stance is irrelevant, as your organization would have violated HIPAA regulations by not signing a BAA. More to the point, a HIPAA compliant email vendor will be eager to highlight their willingness to sign a BAA, as it advertises their ability to safeguard PHI and aid companies in achieving compliance.

Encrypting PHI

Encryption needs to be a major consideration when it comes to integrating a third-party email services provider. Adequate encryption measures ensure that sensitive data is protected even in the event of its exfiltration or interception. Sure, the hackers now have hold of the PHI, but with proper encryption policies and controls, it will be unreadable, preserving the privacy of the individuals affected by the data leak.

With this in mind, encryption measures that mitigate third-party email integrations include automated encryption, which ensures PHI is always encrypted without the need for manual configuration, and flexible encryption, which matches the encryption level with the security standards of your recipients.

Threat Intelligence

Unfortunately, cybersecurity never stands still. With the ever-evolving nature of cyber threats, healthcare organizations must keep up with the latest dangers to patient data. This means creating a process for discovering, and acting upon, the latest threat intelligence.

This could entail signing up for a threat intelligence service, or retaining the periodic services of an external threat intelligence expert.

Developing An Incident Response Plan For Vendor-Related Breaches

The alarming reality of securing PHI is that, even with robust safeguards in place, such as continuous monitoring, a process for acquiring the latest threat intelligence, and generally following the advice outlined in this post, data breaches are still a stark reality. Cyber criminals will always target healthcare organizations, due to the value and sensitivity of their data and systems. Worse, even as security measures grow more effective, the tools that malicious actors have at their disposal become more sophisticated. It’s an arms race, and one that’s only been exacerbated by the introduction of AI, with both security professionals and cyber criminals honing their use of it for their respective purposes.

Taking all this into consideration, having a comprehensive incident response plan in place ensures your organization responds quickly and effectively to cyber threats, or even suspicious activity. Your incident response plan should:

Detail what employees should do if they suspect malicious activity.
Outline steps for investigation and containment.
When and how to notify affected parties.
Processes for disaster recovery and retaining operational continuity.

While it’s vital to develop a general incident response plan, having a specific set of protocols for security breaches caused by third-party vendors is especially prudent.

Choose a HIPAA-Compliant Email Provider

An efficient and convenient way of mitigating the risks of third-party email integrations is to deploy a HIPAA compliant email delivery platform for communicating with patients and customers.

Being well-versed with the safety requirements of healthcare organizations, HIPAA compliant email software features all the security required to safeguard PHI. In deploying a HIPAA compliant email provider, you also implement several of the strategies outlined above, such as encryption and signing a BAA (as a HIPAA compliant will offer a BAA). Accounting for this, taking the time to select the right HIPAA compliant email provider for your organization’s needs and goals should be a key part of your overall cyber threat defense strategy.

Train Staff on Secure Email Communication Practices

Your staff is a considerable part of securing third-party email communications, so they must know the best practices for email security and safeguarding PHI. Comprehensive cyber threat awareness training ensures your personnel understand the risks of HIPAA non-compliance and follow the procedures you’ve set in place. Furthermore, the more responsibility an employee has in regards to PHI, the more comprehensive and regular their training needs to be.

Additionally, training, or “drilling”, if you will, on their roles in the incident response process increases its efficacy considerably and optimizes your response to attempts at unauthorized access to data.

How LuxSci Mitigates the Risks of Third-Party Integrations

At LuxSci, we specialize in providing secure, HIPAA compliant solutions that enable healthcare organizations to execute effective email communications and marketing campaigns.

With more than 20 years of experience, and helping close to 2000 healthcare organizations with HIPAA compliant email services, LuxSci has developed powerful, proven tools that sidestep the vulnerabilities often associated with third-party email integration. To learn more about how LuxSci can help your organization address the risks of third-party email integration, contact us today.

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LuxSci Achieves Best-in-Class Performance for Email Security

June 26, 2024
LuxSci

We’re pleased to share our latest designations and recognition for being “best-in-class” when it comes to email security, including from SecurityScorecard, SSL Labs and the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards.

As you may know, our commitment to email security is unwavering, playing a central role in everything we do. Most of all, this commitment focuses on our customers – and ensuring PHI data is secure at all times. We do this via product innovation, best practices and staying ahead of the latest threats.

With that in mind, now’s a great time to highlight our company’s core values – which are anchored in security – to give you an idea of what it’s like to work with us. Together, they make up what we call the The LuxSci Way with a focus on the following:

Secure – We protect the security and privacy of our customers’ data and their systems by taking a security-first approach.
Responsible – We are focused on cybersecurity and ensure our software and systems are continually updated for the latest threats.
Smart – We proactively apply our knowledge and deep expertise in cybersecurity to provide efficient, responsive customer support.
Trust – We sustain partnerships with our customers, and we are committed to their long-term protection and success.

98/100 on SecurityScorecard

LuxSci recently scored 98/100 and received an A rating on SecurityScorecard, a leading cybersecurity ratings firm. SecurityScorecard has ranked more than 21,000 unique vendors in the healthcare space with an average score of 88 and a B rating, placing LuxSci at the top end of the rankings in our industry.

SecurityScorecard ratings offer easy-to-read A-F ratings across a range of risk factors, including network, endpoint and application security, DNS health, and IP reputation. In total, SecurityScorecard has rated more than 11 million organizations worldwide and supports thousands of organizations with its rating technology for self-monitoring, third-party risk management, board reporting, and cyber insurance underwriting.

A+ on SSL Labs TLS Support Check

In related news, LuxSci achieved an overall A+ rating for its latest Qualys SSL Labs TLS support check. SSL Labs performs a deep analysis of the configuration of any SSL web server on the public Internet to better understand how SSL is deployed, scoring vendors across key areas, including certificate, protocol support, key exchange and cipher strength.

SSL Labs is a non-commercial research effort, welcoming participation from any individual and organization interested in SSL.

LuxSci Receives Cybersecurity Excellence Award for Healthcare

Finally, LuxSci recently received a 2024 Cybersecurity Excellence Award for healthcare products. The annual awards recognize excellence, leadership, and innovation in cybersecurity across a range of categories and industries. LuxSci was recognized for its Secure Marketing product for HIPPA-compliant marketing, which features industry-leading email security.

Part of the LuxSci Secure Healthcare Engagement Suite of software, LuxSci Secure Marketing empowers healthcare providers, payers and suppliers to use protected health information (PHI) to create secure and personalized email campaigns that increase patient engagement and improve outcomes. The highly flexible LuxSci Secure Marketing solution can securely send millions of emails per month, featuring list management, automation, easy-to-use templates, detailed reporting & analytics, and API connectivity to easily integrate with data and applications.

If you’d like to learn more about LuxSci email security, and our HIPAA-compliant healthcare communications solutions for email, marketing, forms and text, reach out to us today and schedule a call with an expert.

What Are HIPAA Secure Email Requirements? A Detailed Guide for Healthcare Providers

March 3, 2025
Pete Wermter

This concise guide answers the often-asked question of ‘what are HIPAA secure email requirements?’. We’ll explore the essential components of HIPAA secure email and the measures healthcare organizations must take to best protect the sensitive patient and customer data under their care.

In healthcare, email often includes protected health information (PHI), and any transmission of PHI via email must ensure that this sensitive data is protected from unauthorized access and subsequent exposure.

HIPAA compliant email refers to a HIPAA secure email service that meets the privacy and security standards set by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). In the pursuit of securing patient data and ensuring each individual’s right to privacy, HIPAA has issued a series of guidelines designed to protect sensitive patient data during email transmission.

HIPAA Secure Email Requirements In Detail

To be classified as HIPAA secure email, an email system must meet a range of privacy and security requirements designed to protect sensitive patient data.

Let’s begin with a deeper dive into the essential requirements of a HIPAA compliant email provider:

Encryption

Encryption is the cornerstone of HIPAA compliant email. Both in-transit encryption (when the email is sent) and at-rest encryption (when the email, and, by extension, the PHI it contains, is stored on the server) are mandatory HIPAA requirements.

End-to-end encryption safeguards PHI from being accessed by malicious actors, e.g. hackers and other cybercriminals, even if they get hold of it. Without proper encryption, in contrast, the sensitive health information contained in emails can easily be interpreted, and, consequently, has value if intercepted.

Better still, encryption for HIPAA secure email needs to be automated and flexible. Flexibility refers to the email provider’s ability to match the type of encryption with the recipient’s security posture. Automation, meanwhile, ensures that PHI is encrypted without the need for a manual process by the email user or human intervention. These capabilities not only reduce the potential for human error but also diminish the admin overhead of securing PHI.

Access Control

HIPAA email rules require strict access controls to ensure that only authorized personnel can access sensitive data. Not everyone at a healthcare organization, or a third party that happens to have access to their data in the course of their business relationship, should have access to patient data. With this in mind, access to PHI must be enforced through risk mitigation measures such as user authentication, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and role-based access controls (RBAC).

MFA, for instance, requires users to verify their identity beyond their login credentials. This could include something they know (a secret phase, a one-time password (OTP), something they have (a keycard or security token), or something they are (i.e., biometrics: retinal scans, fingerprints, etc.). The reason it’s called multi-factor authentication is that healthcare organizations can implement as many authentication measures as warranted by the sensitivity of the patient data.

Audit Trails

HIPAA mandates that all access to PHI be logged for auditing purposes. This includes tracking the sender, recipient, timestamps, and any modifications to the email or its contents. Audit logs ensure that any unauthorized access or potential breach can be investigated, addressed, and, above all, contained promptly. For HIPAA secure email compliance, audit logs must be kept for a minimum of six years and must be easily accessible for compliance audits.

Business Associate Agreement (BAA)

When using third-party email providers, such as LuxSci, healthcare organizations must enter into a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). This legally binding contract ensures that the email provider, i.e., the business associate, is also held to HIPAA’s security and privacy requirements. By the same token, the BAA covers the responsibilities of the healthcare provider – or ‘covered entity’ – in safeguarding PHI and outlines penalties for non-compliance for both parties.

HIPAA Secure Email Best Practices

To ensure your email system meets HIPAA’s compliance standards and remains secure, it’s critical to follow these best practices. If you’re unsure where to start when it comes to tightening up your compliance efforts, start with these essential principles:

End-to-End Encryption: A HIPAA compliant email provider must implement end-to-end encryption: meaning that PHI is encrypted when sent and decrypted only by the intended recipient. LuxSci’s encryption protocols ensure that PHI is never exposed during the transmission process or in storage.
Implement Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): to further enhance the security of your email communications, expand your IT infrastructure to enable MFA. This ensures that unauthorized parties cannot access email accounts even if login credentials are compromised. MFA adds another layer of protection by requiring as many factors of identification as the PHI demands.
Regular Audits: conduct regular audits to ensure that all actions on email communications are properly logged, tracked, and record who accessed patient data and for what purpose. As well as malicious behavior, these audits can highlight overly generous access privileges and enable security teams to tighten up their policies and protocols.
Continuous Monitoring: as well as regularly auditing PHI access logs, you need to deploy a continuous monitoring solution to remain aware of suspicious behaviors and potential attempts at data breaches. Without continuous monitoring, malicious actors have the opportunity to infiltrate your network between periodic risk assessments.
Employee Education and Training: if your staff isn’t educated on how to handle sensitive patient data, all your other efforts to safeguard PHI are likely to be undermined. In light of this, training your workforce on HIPAA regulations, how to adhere to them, and the potentially dire consequences of failing to comply with their standards, must be a top priority.
Choose a Trusted, HIPAA Compliant Email Provider: the email provider you select must offer features specifically designed to meet HIPAA standards, removing a lot of the complications from achieving compliance in the process.

Why Choose LuxSci for Your Organization’s HIPAA Secure Email Communication Needs?

When it comes to safeguarding PHI, LuxSci offers the security of flexibility and automated end-to-end encryption, unparalleled scalability, and best-in-class deliverability to carry out effective, high-volume HIPAA-compliant email campaigns.

Whether you’re a growing practice or a large healthcare company, our solutions facilitate effective email engagement, while maintaining the highest standards of email security and compliance.

Here’s are the ways LuxSci’s leading solutions help ensure HIPAA-compliant email communication within your healthcare organization, no matter the size of your company, or the volume of emails you send:

HIPAA Secure Email Gateway for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365

LuxSci’s Secure Email Gateway is the perfect solution for smaller healthcare organizations or those already using Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Our service enables you to make your existing email system HIPAA compliant without disrupting your current workflow and user experience. LuxSci’s Secure Email Gateway automatically applies end-to-end encryption, ensuring that all emails containing PHI are securely transmitted. The best part? The process is automated and transparent to users, requiring no extra steps and causing no interruptions.

Secure High Volume Email Solution for Large Healthcare Organizations

For larger healthcare providers and organizations that send thousands or millions of emails per month, LuxSci’s Secure High Volume Email solution provides a scalable, highly secure solution that ensures compliance without sacrificing performance. Whether you’re sending newsletters, appointment reminders, preventative care emails, or other communications to a large patient or customer base, our solution delivers best-in-class HIPAA-compliant email deliverability rates of 95% or higher.

Flexible, Automated Encryption with SecureLine Technology

At the heart of LuxSci’s HIPAA-compliant email solutions is our SecureLine technology, our proprietary flexible and automated encryption service. SecureLine enables highly flexible, automated encryption that adapts to the security posture of your recipients’ servers, ensuring that messages reach the intended recipient. Whether you are sending individual messages or conducting a bulk email outreach campaign, SecureLine automatically handles the encryption, keeping your email communications protected, secure and private from end-to-end.

Scalability for Large Enterprises

LuxSci’s infrastructure supports some of the largest healthcare organizations in the world, providing the scalability needed to handle high volumes of sensitive communications, including sending hundreds of millions of emails per year. As your organization grows, LuxSci can scale its solutions to meet your needs, ensuring that you maintain HIPAA compliance and a seamless, secure email experience.

Contact LuxSci Today

If you have any questions or concerns about HIPAA secure email requirements or would like to learn more about how LuxSci can help secure your healthcare communications, don’t hesitate to contact us.

We’ll be happy to discuss your unique needs and help you find the right solutions to help your organization become more secure, compliant, and better at engaging with your patients and customers.

HIPAA-Compliant Email Marketing: FAQ

November 21, 2023
LuxSci

Email is an essential channel for most marketers. However, HIPAA regulations raise many questions for healthcare marketers who need to execute email marketing campaigns without violating patient privacy.

HIPAA is a complicated law that offers a lot of guidance but does not require the use of any specific technologies to protect patient privacy. The ambiguity causes a lot of confusion for marketers trying to integrate email into their marketing strategy. This article addresses some frequently asked questions about HIPAA-compliant email marketing and offers advice for securing patient data and futureproofing your marketing.

Do generic practice newsletters need to be protected?

Some marketers assume practice newsletters do not contain health information and, therefore, do not fall under HIPAA requirements. However, this assumption is often incorrect. Many are surprised to learn that protected health information can be implied from seemingly benign information.

In this way, many generic email newsletters often indirectly contain PHI because they are sent to lists of current patients. Email addresses are individually identifiable and combined with the email content; it may imply that they are patients of the practice. For example, say you send a “generic” newsletter to the patients of a dialysis clinic. An eavesdropper may be able to infer that the recipients receive dialysis. Therefore, the email reveals information about an individual’s health treatment, is PHI, and should be secured in compliance with HIPAA regulations.

In some cases, it can be complicated to determine what is PHI and what is not. Using a HIPAA-compliant marketing solution is best to avoid ambiguity and ensure security.

How Do I Find a HIPAA-Compliant Email Marketing Vendor?

Unfortunately, using broadly popular email marketing platforms is not recommended. Many of these platforms were designed for e-commerce businesses and are not secure enough to meet HIPAA requirements. We do not recommend using a solution not specifically equipped to meet the healthcare industry’s unique security and compliance needs. To determine if your email marketing provider is compliant, they must meet three broad criteria at a minimum.

The vendor must sign a Business Associate Agreement outlining how they plan to secure your data and what they will do in the event of a breach.
Encrypt data at rest when it is stored in their systems.
Encrypt email messages and data in transit as it is sent to the recipients.

Not all vendors will be up to the task. Carefully vet your email marketing vendors to ensure they are taking steps to secure data and protect patient privacy.

What is an Email API?

API is an acronym that stands for “Application Programming Interface.” An email API gives applications (like CRMs, CDPs, or EHRs) the ability to send emails using data from the application. Email APIs also return campaign data to the platform or dashboards so you can assess the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Trigger-based transactional or marketing emails are ideal for sending with an email API. In this situation, emails are sent when pre-determined conditions in the application are met. Healthcare organizations may use email APIs to send appointment reminders using electronic health records system data about a patient’s upcoming appointment.

Email APIs enable the automation of common email workflows. However, they are not interchangeable with email marketing platforms. Email APIs do not include the contact management systems standard in most email marketing platforms because all that data lives within the application they connect to. In addition, email API tools typically do not include drag-and-drop editor tools or other design features that help your emails stand out.

Does HIPAA permit providers to send unencrypted emails with PHI to patients?

Encryption is an addressable standard under the HIPAA Security Rule, but that does not mean it is optional. The HIPAA Privacy Rule does not explicitly forbid unencrypted email. Still, it does state that “other safeguards should be applied to protect privacy reasonably, such as limiting the amount or type of information disclosed through the unencrypted email.”

In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services also states that “covered entities are permitted to send individuals unencrypted emails if they have advised the individual of the risk, and the individual still prefers the unencrypted email.” Some organizations use waivers to inform patients of the risks and acquire permission to send unencrypted emails.

However, we do not recommend this approach for several reasons:

Keeping track of waivers over time and recording status changes and updates is challenging.
Signed waivers do not insulate you from the consequences of a HIPAA breach.
And finally, using waivers to send unencrypted emails doesn’t eliminate your other HIPAA obligations like data retention and disposal. Using a HIPAA-compliant solution is more manageable and eliminates ambiguity.

Can patients exercise their right of access by receiving PHI via unencrypted email?

Yes, but they must be fully informed of the risks and sign waivers acknowledging them. The caveats in the previous answer apply. It’s always better to utilize an encryption tool to protect patient data.

Is Microsoft 365 or Exchange 365 encryption sufficient for marketing emails?

Microsoft 365 can be configured with Office Message Encryption (OME) to comply with HIPAA. However, the program is not well-suited to send marketing emails. OME primarily relies on portal pickup encryption, in which the message is stored securely on a server and requires the recipient to log in to the portal to read the email. If you are a marketer trying to increase engagement, the portal adds a barrier to access that many will not cross. Light-PHI marketing messages are best sent using TLS encryption. TLS-encrypted messages arrive in the recipient’s inbox just like a regular email and do not require a user to log in to read the message.

In addition, Microsoft 365 is not configured to send high volumes of email. If you plan to send large marketing campaigns, you could unintentionally disrupt regular business communications by sending all the messages through the same infrastructure. You should separate your business and marketing email sending to protect your IP reputation and achieve your desired sending throughput.

What are common email marketing use cases for healthcare?

Email marketing in healthcare is not restricted to boring practice newsletters. When you utilize tools that enable the use of PHI in your targeting and personalization efforts, the sky is the limit. With consumer preferences shifting toward digital communications, marketers willing to utilize the email channel and tactics like segmentation and personalization can see better results.

Email is an excellent way to communicate with patients. A sampling of ways that healthcare marketers can use email include:

engaging patients in their healthcare journey
educating patients about their healthcare conditions and treatments
improving attendance and scheduling
retaining patients
increasing preventative procedures
collecting data on the patient experience
improving patient satisfaction

Conclusion

HIPAA can be difficult to understand, but choosing the right tools and adequately vetting your vendors makes it easy to execute HIPAA-compliant email marketing campaigns. If you are interested in learning more about LuxSci’s easy-to-use, Secure Marketing platform, please contact our sales team.

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Pete Wermter