If you want to know if your personal information is secure with us, the answer is absolutely. Elevate Holistics is 100% compliant, and we’ve designed a secure and encrypted platform to protect your personal information.
How exactly do we do it? That’s not exactly a simple question, but we’ll try to explain the steps we’ve taken to protect your data and why data privacy is so important in this industry.
How Elevate Protects Your Personal Information
We designed a secure infrastructure to make sure that every piece of information you share with us is safe. And that process starts from the moment you book your appointment.
Here are some measures we’ve taken to keep your personal information safe and secure:
We’re HIPAA-Compliant
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (or HIPAA for short) is a federal law designed to protect patients’ personal health information. It applies to in-person and virtual consultations and guarantees that the personal health information (PHI) a patient shares with a medical professional or organization remains private and will not be disclosed without their consent.
Medical marijuana patients are also protected under HIPAA. Getting your MMJ card involves sharing personal information such as contact information, medical records, and diagnosis codes. Organizations that handle this type of PHI, such as Elevate Holistics, must adhere to HIPAA regulations.
Compliance is an integral part of Elevate’s operations. We designed our entire system to be HIPAA compliant. This means that we use advanced encryption protocols to protect your data and continuously analyze and look for potential risks to the privacy of your health information.
We Use Strong Encryption to Keep Your Data Safe
We use 256-bit encryption to keep your information safe, the same level trusted by banks and government institutions.
To put this into perspective, weak encryption that uses a 56-bit key, for example, can be hacked in a matter of hours. By comparison, a 256-bit key is unbreakable. Even if the hackers had a supercomputer, it would still take them trillions of years to hack into our system.
We use strong encryption during every critical step, from data transmission to storage.
We Only Partner with Trusted Third-Parties
As much as we would like to control every aspect of this process, we need to rely on external partners for certain services. That’s why we are extremely selective about the partners and third-party vendors we collaborate with.
We are committed to patient privacy and data security and don’t share or sell personal information with third parties.
Minimal Data Collection
While some details are essential to providing you with safe and effective telemedicine services, we collect only what’s necessary. This may include personal information like name and address and PHI like treatment information, medical records, and other health-related data.
The Importance of Data Privacy in the Cannabis Industry
For a long time, the healthcare industry has been a preferred target for cybercriminals. According to a 2023 IBM Security Cost of a Data Breach Report, healthcare data breaches have been the costliest for the 13th year, amounting to $10.93 million.
Now, take the challenges the healthcare industry faces and combine them with the regulatory hurdles of the cannabis industry and the sensitive nature of the information being shared. You’ll get a very accurate picture of how high the stakes are when it comes to data protection.
Let’s think about it this way: In most industries, data breaches usually result in identity theft or financial fraud. But because of the stigma still surrounding marijuana use, the repercussions of data breaches in the cannabis industry could extend beyond financial harm. It could also lead to a violation of privacy for those using medical marijuana for sensitive medical conditions.
7 Most Common Data Security Threats for Medical Marijuana Telehealth Services
Medical marijuana patients now enjoy unprecedented convenience and accessibility. They can get or renew their MMJ card from the comfort of their home by booking a consultation with a physician. But because valuable information is shared during this process, these systems could be exposed to cyberattacks such as:
- Data Breaches
Data breaches happen when a bad actor gains unauthorized access to a patient’s records. A security breach can give away valuable information like names, addresses, ID numbers, credit payment details, and MMJ card numbers that could lead to identity theft, financial fraud, or other social and legal concerns.
- Ransomware
Ransomware is one of the most common cyberattacks that health and telehealth organizations face. It’s malware that penetrates an organization’s system and encrypts its information. The organization must pay a ransom in return for their data.
- Phishing Attacks
Cybercriminals use deceptive emails or messages to trick patients or employees into sharing sensitive information.
- Weak Encryption
Simply put, encryption is a way of scrambling data so only authorized parties can decipher it. If an organization doesn’t have a strong encryption protocol in place, it may become a target of a brute-force attack. In this method of attack, cybercriminals try every possible combination of keys until they find the right one.
- Third-party Vulnerabilities
Medical marijuana telehealth platforms must rely on third-party services for video calls, data storage, and payment processes. Each of these third parties could become an attack vector that could affect the platform’s security.
- Denial of Service Attack
In a denial of service attack (DoS), the hacker floods an organization’s system with fake traffic. It’s often used as a diversionary tactic to steal patient information.
- Weak Access Control
Threats can also come from within an organization. Unauthorized access, negligence, or mishandling of patient information can compromise the security of a system.
Final Thoughts
Elevate Holistics always puts the patient first, and that includes making sure your personal information is safe and protected. From being HIPAA compliant to strong encryption, we prioritize patient privacy and security. This way, you can focus on your health, knowing your personal information is safe.
Book your consultation now to get or renew your MMJ card from a secure and reliable platform.
