Effectively manage health-related data and uphold privacy when handling sensitive information submitted by event participants through the event website. By leveraging the tools offered by Backstage, you can confidently align your events with HIPAA standards and regulations.
About HIPAA
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (including the Privacy Rule, Security Rule, Breach notification Rule, and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act) ("HIPAA"), requires Covered Entities and Business Associates to take certain measures to protect health information that can identify an individual. It also provides certain rights to individuals. Zoho does not collect, use, store or maintain health information protected by HIPAA for its own purposes. However, Zoho Backstage provides certain features (as described below) to help its customers use Zoho Backstage in a HIPAA compliant manner.
HIPAA requires Covered Entities to sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with its Business Associates. You can request our BAA template by sending an email to legal@zohocorp.com.
Protect sensitive information submitted through your website forms by marking fields with ePHI for automatic encryption. Encrypting fields containing protected health information ensures additional security and prevents unauthorized access to confidential data.
- Open the Form Builder to edit any form.
- Registration Form: Go to Registrations > Registration Form.
- Sponsor Request Form: Go to Manage > Sponsors > Sponsor Request Form.
- Exhibitor Request Form: Go to Exhibitors > Exhibitor Request Form.
- Get in Touch & Custom Forms: Go to Manage > Custom Forms.
- Click a custom form field that will collect ePHI. The Field Properties side panel will display.
- Go to the Data Privacy tab.
- Click the Field value includes ePHI checkbox. When data is submitted in this field, it will be encrypted before it is saved.
The Encrypt field checkbox will be automatically selected and can't be deselected. This option is currently not available for the session feedback form.
Exporting Encrypted Data With Authorization
Facilitate secure export of HIPAA-encrypted data that is collected through forms by restricting access exclusively to authorized individuals. By default, access to encrypted data is granted to:
- Portal Owner
- Portal Admin
- Space Owner
- Space Admin
- Space Organizer
- Event Owner
- Event Organizer
This setting can't be changed. However, you can create a customized role to tailor permissions based on specific requirements.
For Custom Forms:
- Go to Manage > Custom Forms from the Dock.
- Click the Menu icon associated with a form.
- Click Export. The Export form data pop-up will display.
- Click the Include ePHI and personally identifiable information check box.
- Click the Export button.
Setting Up Permissions
Ensure secure and compliant management of confidential information by tailoring access levels for different user roles in Backstage. Restricting a user will prevent them from seeing any encrypted data in Backstage.
- Go to Manage > Team > Roles and Privileges tab from the Dock.
- Click the View Privileges button for the desired user role.
- Scroll down to the Manage Privacy Permissions section.
- Allow protected data from forms toggle is enabled by default and cannot be altered for:
- Portal Owner
- Portal Admin
- Space Owner
- Space Admin
- Space Organizer
- Event Owner
- Event Organizer
- For Event Staff and other custom roles, enable/disable the Allow protected data from forms toggle.
- In the same section, turn on the toggle for the specific forms you want to grant access to for this user role.
Accessing Audit Logs
Obtain a comprehensive audit trail for HIPAA compliance by accessing the activity log in your portal. Track and efficiently monitor for all actions performed on sensitive data. Edits made by participants to form responses will also be captured in activity logs.
Viewing records containing ePHI data will not be logged in the audit trail.
- Click your user avatar in the top-right corner.
- Scroll down and select User Activities.
- From there, you can navigate to All Activities, Only Portal Activities, or Only Event Activities.
- Use filters to view activities performed by a specific person, within a specific event, or in a particular module.