Send and receive: that's what you need to do, in order to maximise your value in healthcare. Ever wondered what would happen in case this data was lost during this sharing process? Ever wondered how your organization's name would look in the 'Wall of Shame', where companies who have been held accountable for massive data breaches end up?
Secure data transfer is so important that HIPAA compliances have a complete set of rules for the same, which are Implement tools for encryption and decryption. This protocol is to ensure that all devices of authorized users are secure.
Said devices must have encryption and decryption functionalities - files should be encrypted when sent outside the borders of the company firewall, and decrypted when they enter the firewall at the receiver's end.
This basically means that when you share data outside your company, each laptop or mobile officially used in your organization must first encrypt the data, then send it, and also ensure that the receiver can decrypt the data once it is within protected boundaries.
You must ensure secure data transfer to the business as well as the customers. This ensures that when it is out in the open and accessible through the internet due to interconnectivity, it is safe from hacking or data theft attempts. Your primary aim must be to ensure that this data enroute its transfer journey is encrypted. At the same time, this data should be inaccessible to third parties along the way. It should not be stored on cloud storage platforms or internal servers for caching, and in an ideal world, these storage locations should not even act as intermediary mediums to transfer from point A to point B.
Simply put, you want your data to be encrypted from your device and take exactly one long hop to its destination without any stoppages in between, and while hopping, the data must be safeguarded. Achieve this, and, as far as the encryption and decryption aspect is concerned, you are now HIPAA compliant.
