What is HIPAA Security Rule and Privacy Rule?

What Is HIPAA?

HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. This act helps protect patient’s health information and improve the efficiency of the health care system. The original intent of HIPAA was to provide patients with more privacy and security in their health care. The Privacy Rule and Security Rule of HIPAA protects the privacy of individually identifiable health information. This rule also requires the use of administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the information.

It also focuses on the integrity, availability and confidentiality of the information. The HIPAA Security Rule protects all forms of PHI, including electronic and paper. The Security Rule was created to provide a consistent and comprehensive set of standards to protect the privacy of health information.

What is the HIPAA security rule?

The HIPAA security rule is one of the most important rules in the HIPAA privacy protection program.

The HIPAA security rule addresses all the tangible mechanisms covered entities must have in place to support internal privacy policies and procedures. However, the rule does not address end users’ risk assessments and monitoring of health information technology systems.

The security rule was implemented to help create national standards for digital security and administrative protocols. Some of those measures outlined by the rule include:

1. Security management processes: Security is a critical part of an organization’s overall success. It encompasses the protection of the physical and logical security, as well as the protection of information and data from unauthorized access.
2. Workforce training and management: The personnel within an organization are responsible for ensuring compliance with all workplace policies and regulations. The training of the staff is an essential part of the training in compliance. . The company must be sensitive to the importance of the training, so they select a curriculum that fits their environmental needs. The personnel within an organization are responsible for ensuring compliance with all workplace policies and regulations.

What Is the HIPAA Privacy Rule? 

HIPAA is a set of regulations that govern the privacy of electronic health information. The HIPAA Privacy Rule sets out how organizations must handle personal health information and how they can use it.

Healthcare organizations and physicians have access to essential personal information from patients regarding account and identity information, as well as confidential health information. However, they are not able to access this information, which leads to privacy concerns. Healthcare organizations and physicians need the ability to add a third-party authentication (ID) scheme into their systems. The digital age and the cyber threat have created huge opportunities for hackers to steal confidential information, information that can be used to commit fraud, identity theft, etc.

What is the difference between HIPAA Privacy and HIPAA Security?

HIPAA Privacy and Security are two different things.

In the HIPAA Privacy Act, “information” is defined as “any matter that is known or can reasonably be expected to be known in the ordinary course of business”. The HIPAA Security Act defines “information” as “any record or item of tangible personal property”. Under this definition, it is not possible to create an information system that would not have any risk associated with it.

The HIPAA Privacy rule focuses on the right of an individual to control the use of his or her personal information. In the privacy rule, the confidentiality of PHI is an assurance that the information will be safeguarded from unauthorized disclosure. Consequently, there is a need to ensure that PHI is not disclosed unless it can be made sufficiently secure, such as by encrypting the information. The privacy rules for HIPAA are complex and differ from other regulations.

HIPAA security rule focuses on administrative, technical and physical safeguards specifically as they relate to electronic PHI (ePHI) data. . It focuses on the protection of ePHI data so that it is not compromised, manipulated or inappropriately accessed by unauthorized individuals. The HIPAA security rule covers all aspects of HIPAA-covered entities’ ePHI use and requires that all covered entities implement appropriate safeguards for the security and confidentiality of the PHI (ePHI) data.

Typically ePHI is stored in:

• Computer hard drives.
• Magnetic tapes, disks, memory cards.

What separates the HIPAA privacy law and security rule?

HIPAA privacy law and security rule are two different laws that have been created to protect the privacy of health data. The HIPAA privacy law was designed to protect individuals’ data from unauthorized access and use by third parties, while the security rule was designed to ensure that companies do not store and use personal health information in a way that violates the law.

HIPAA Privacy Rule is a set of regulations issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that regulates how businesses can handle medical information for their patients. It aims to keep patients safe from harm caused by others ’ misuse of their information and is a way for businesses to protect their privacy. The privacy law, for instance, dictates in which scenarios transmission of patient data is appropriate, like in care coordination. The HIPAA security rule lays out what controls entities subject to it need to maintain to ensure data protection.