If your organization is among the HIPAA-covered businesses looking to adopt Microsoft Teams, here are three things to keep in mind about using the platform, orchestrating compliance solutions, and staying in compliance with HIPAA: 1. For healthcare organizations, the data sharing these integrations enable can include PHI, which creates compliance risk. Microsoft Teams helps enhance workforce productivity, and it can integrate with many apps and other programs.
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In late October 2020, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reported during an earnings call with investors that Microsoft Teams had 115 million daily active users-up from 44 million in March. One specific question many healthcare businesses are weighing right now is this: “Is Microsoft Teams HIPAA compliant?” The unified business communication platform is top of mind for these organizations because its use has skyrocketed during the pandemic. By doing so, they can identify risky behaviors quickly and respond to investigations or audits as needed. Therefore, many healthcare organizations have found that they need to capture, monitor, and retain such communications. Still, employees can inadvertently share and misuse PHI internal communications platforms like Microsoft Teams. These systems are designed to protect sensitive PHI within these communications. Often in healthcare cybersecurity, organizations use separate secure messaging systems for patient communications.
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Is microsoft office 365 business premium hipaa compliant series#
HIPAA is a series of federal regulatory standards that requires companies that handle PHI to have physical, network, and process security measures in place-and to follow them. Healthcare organizations have been especially concerned about how adopting apps for hosting audio and video conferences, communicating via group chat, collaborating on files, and more might impact their ability to safeguard patients’ protected health information (PHI) and stay in compliance with HIPAA: the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. COVID-19 disruption intensified that focus exponentially, as these platforms and apps went from novel to necessity for countless companies whose workforces became all or partially remote, almost overnight. Even before the pandemic, many businesses were trying to understand and manage the various security and compliance risks, including regulatory compliance risks, posed by platforms and applications that enable virtual team collaboration.