Protected Health Information (PHI), as defined under HIPAA, is any information that is created or received by a health care professional whether oral or recorded in any form or medium and relates to the past, present, or future physical or mental health or condition of any individual. Under HITECH, PHI also means individually identifiable health information, which is a subset of health information, including demographic information collected from an individual, and is created or received by a health care professional.  The HIPAA Privacy Rule covers protected health information in any medium while the HIPAA Security Rule covers electronic protected health information.    Praetorian Secure recommends appropriate actions for controlling and minimizing the risk or potential risk of PHI exposures through the various methods:

• Securely shredding unnecessary data using DoD's "3 pass wipe"

• Scrubbing sensitive data

• Encrypting unsecured files

• Quarantining files to a secure location

Praetorian Secure performs various services and assessments to discover any potentially exposed PHI leakage or the potential of any PHI data breach to maintain HIPAA and HITECH compliance.

For more information: http://www.hhs.gov