AWS Wickr is now a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) eligible service.
As remote work and telehealth services have become more popular, healthcare organizations, medical practices, and insurance companies have increasingly turned to HIPAA-compliant messaging solutions to enable the communication of confidential information while guarding against data theft, security incidents, and noncompliance with regulations.
According to The HIPAA Journal, a HIPAA violation in 2023 can cost more than $50,000.
Penalties for HIPAA violations can be issued by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and state attorneys general. In addition to financial penalties, covered entities may be required to adopt a corrective action plan to bring policies and procedures up to the standards demanded by HIPAA.
AWS Wickr is an end-to-end encrypted enterprise messaging and collaboration tool that is built on a foundation of privacy and trust. With AWS Wickr, you can enable one-to-one and group messaging, voice and video calling, file sharing, screen sharing, and location sharing, without increasing organizational risk.
Customers that are subject to HIPAA can now use AWS Wickr to communicate with internal stakeholders and external partners while helping to protect against third-party access to personal data, including personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI). AWS Wickr networks can be quickly created through the AWS Management Console, and workflows can be securely automated with Wickr bots. AWS Wickr allows you to maintain administrative control over data, including setting permissions, configuring ephemeral messaging options, and defining security groups. Information can be logged to a private, customer-controlled data store for retention and auditing purposes.
If you have an executed Business Associate Addendum (BAA) with AWS, you can now use AWS Wickr for workloads that are within the scope of HIPAA. AWS Wickr is generally available in the AWS US East (Northern Virginia) and AWS GovCloud (US-West) Regions.
Contact us to learn more and get started.