HIPAA Compliance Checklist, Part 4: Physical Safeguards for HIPAA Compliance

Thursday, 10 July 2008

We've talked about the planning components of your HIPAA compliance efforts, including a data backup plan, a disaster recovery plan, and an emergency mode operation plan. If you missed those posts, you can find them here: Part 1: Backup HIPAA Data Offsite, Part 2: Data Disaster Recovery Plan and Part 3: Emergency Mode Operation Plan.

An additional requirement that you have to worry about is physical safeguards, such as facility access controls. This means that you have to limit physical access to your electronic information and the facility, or facilities, where it is stored. But you also have to ensure that properly authorized access is allowed. And if your data needs to be recovered from one of the facilities, you need procedures in place that allow access to those facilities. Are you confused yet? This is why you need to let your data backup vendor worry about this for you!

This is what your data backup company needs to provide for you:

All data should be securely stored in two geographically separate Class A data centers.
Full physical security should be provided at each remote data center, including security cameras, key cards, and biometric access.
Fire suppression and environmental control must also be provided, as well as automatic backup power from onsite generators.
Employees of your backup provider should not have access to your data at any time.

If you're looking for an affordable, secure, and feature-packed solution for your data backup and disaster recovery needs, visit the comparison charts at Compare Online Backup to see Granite Mountain is better than the competition. Then complete our Fast Quote Form or call us at 877-562-0333 ext. 265 to speak to a representative immediately.

Next in our HIPAA Compliance Checklist series:

Part 5: Technical Safeguards