Best VPNs for HIPAA Compliance?

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Business and VPNs go well together since companies need to protect their data. A VPN is one of the best and easiest ways to ensure encryption for online files and secure data transfers. It is important to ensure employees always use a VPN to securely access company servers, backend systems, and when transmitting sensitive client information.

VPNs are needed in the corporate space since healthcare businesses need to protect their data according to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA–which mandates the safeguarding of privacy and confidentiality of healthcare data.

Many healthcare businesses store data on the cloud and ensuring the data stays in the right hands is essential.

However, just because VPNs and business data go well together, doesn’t mean that all VPNs for good for business. That’s why we’ve created this article on the best VPNs for HIPAA compliance to inform you what you should be looking for and what you need.

What makes a Good Business VPN?

For a good business VPN–one that maintains HIPPA compliance, you need to have certain core features:

Dedicated IPs

Most VPN providers don’t provide dedicated IPs since they can be a pain to hand out. Our favorite VPN, TorGuard VPN, manages to give out dedicated IPs since they have such an active support team whereas other VPN providers don’t

Dedicated IPs are critical, so you can whitelist remote users on sensitive systems. They allow users to get their IP addresses whereas shared IPs might raise flags and be denied access.

Powerful Encryption

If you’re using VPN for your business to maintain HIPPA compliance, you need the best security.
This means you need high-grade encryption options for maximum data privacy. Only accept a VPN provider that has 256-AES encryption, a 2048-bit RSA key, a no logging policy, and a commitment to privacy in the past. Avoid providers like HideMyAss VPN or other VPN providers that have had major data leaks.

Reliable VPN apps for any OS

If you are going to use a VPN for business, you need one that has support for multiple platforms in case your employees or your supported company hardware have different devices.

Some VPN providers claim they support every platform, but their apps and support are feeble. For your business VPN that supports HIPPA compliance, you will need a VPN that supports Android, iOS, browsers, PC, Mac, and even Linux.

Business VPN panel to manage multiple users

One of the last final aspects you need in a business VPN is a hosted panel that allows you to manage multiple users. This makes it easy to monitor and control the security of your workforce and data at a large scale.

Does HIPAA Conduit Exception Apply to Proxies and VPNs?

Everyone wants a BAA signed for HIPAA compliance, but if you are using a VPN or proxy, you don’t need it. According to this resource, there are exceptions like VPNs where the conduit exception applies:

“The preamble explicitly states that the “mere conduit” exception is intended to include organizations that deal with “any temporary storage of transmitted data incident to such transmission.” The preamble goes on to define the distinction between transmission (including incidental storage associated with such transmission) and ongoing storage.”

Best VPN for HIPAA Compliance

Best VPNs for HIPAA Compliance?

We already covered a lot about what VPN providers provide “business” VPN packages here, so for the purpose of this article on maintaining HIPAA compliance with VPN, we will only recommend you the top option since you need the most powerful security and best core features to maintain HIPAA compliance.

For that, we recommend TorGuard VPN since it contains all of the features that we listed as necessary. TorGuard offers dedicated IPs, a business panel, multiple apps and multi-platform support, 24/7 support, and one of the largest VPN server networks out there with support for over 50+ countries around the world.

Visit TorGuard

Spark has a simple mission to help you chose the best VPN without any bias. Which VPN do I use? See it here!

1 Comment

  1. end-user VPN needed – apporved for communication within HIPAA environment. Need to send/receive encrypted message & data within USA Medical community – i.e. medical records, reports, and all other HIPAA governed e-communications. Pls advise, Thank you, Cee Gee

    Reply

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