HIPAA Compliant WooCommerce Integration Best Practices

Clarity Can Integrate Your eCommerce CRM and Improve WooCommerce Security
Work With Us
woocommerce hipaa ecommerce integration
CAN WOOCOMMERCE INTEGRATE WITH A HIPAA COMPLIANT WEBSITE?

WooCommerce Integration and HIPAA Compliance

eCommerce continues to grow, and there’s no sign of slowing down. Having a sales portal offers advantages such as fast service, comfort, and privacy. It’s this last point — security — that can’t be an afterthought when you’re building your online store or integrating an app into your CRM. WooCommerce integration offers many benefits to your eCommerce business, but WooCommerce security can’t be implemented haphazardly. 

This is especially true when WooCommerce security must also deal with protected health information (PHI, sometimes call ePHI) such as electronic medical records/electronic health records (EMR/EHR). This information is protected under the HIPAA act, and failure to follow HIPAA regulations can have dire effects on your business. You need to ensure you’re following legally binding guidelines if you’re integrating WooCommerce into WordPress. How good is WooCommerce security? What does HIPAA compliance mean? How easily do necessary plugins integrate with your CRM? Keep reading to find answers that can protect your business. 

HIPAA Compliant Solution - Medical Development
BOLSTERING WOOCOMMERCE SECURITY AND KEEPING HIPAA REQUIREMENTS

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is an open-source plugin for WordPress used to build an eCommerce business. Building an eCommerce store is very straightforward and can be done in minutes, allowing companies to start selling quickly and easily. WooCommerce offers many options (such as shipping standardization, alternative payments, bundles, subscriptions, coupon generation, tax calculation, analytics, etc.) that make many aspects of business more efficient. It also allows some customization for design, use of additional plugins, paid extensions, and free extensions. Being open-source makes WooCommerce very popular, as it offers total ownership of the content and data created or stored. It also provides the advantage of a helpful and active user community that is willing to provide advice. 

The standard download for WooCommerce integration with your WordPress site does not make it HIPAA compliant. This hole in your security could allow access to your user data and, in the process, jeopardize the future of the business.  

WooCommerce Security Shouldn’t Be Taken Lightly

We’re not being hyperbolic. Failure to follow PHI data security standards could be disastrous for your eCommerce business. Bolster your WooCommerce security with the help of experienced developers.

Click to Schedule a Demo
image description

What Does HIPAA Compliance Mean? 

The guidelines set in place to ensure that PHI submitted by patients and/or customers stays protected are set by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Any business associated with healthcare that is responsible for discussing medical information, providing treatments, or receiving payments is known as a covered entity. This includes any associates of these entities such as supporting staff who have access to medical records of patients. Covered entities were once required to protect patient data by locking it in a filing cabinet, but nearly all PHI is now electronic. Such stored and transmitted data is subject to HIPAA compliance and must be protected according to HIPAA standards. Each covered entity is charged with providing their own security for the EMR/EHR they are entrusted with, whether the information is stored (data at rest) or transmitted via email, patient/doctor portal, or mobile app. 

What If HIPAA Compliance Fails?

HIPAA has several policies in place to mandate data protection. This includes data transfer, removal, disposal, and a reuse restriction of electronic media containing PHI (ePHI). It also covers emergency access procedures and access control through encryption and decryption. For those who fail to comply with HIPAA regulations, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) division of Health and Human Services (HHS) is responsible for imposing penalties [1]. Fines can cost millions of dollars because the OCR can impose HIPAA fines per record.  

The fines are substantial, but lost customers can be worse. Failure to protect both PHI and customer credit card data will cause your customers to seek out a company that protects their data more thoroughly. If you’re about to perform a WooCommerce integration with WordPress, you can see why WooCommerce security must be improved before you launch your site, and WordPress security best practices must be considered as well. 

IS WOOCOMMERCE SECURE?

How Can HIPAA be Integrated with eCommerce?

Now that we’ve discussed the importance of adhering to HIPAA regulations and the fact that basic WooCommerce security isn’t stringent enough to meet these regulations, we’ve answered the question “Is WooCommerce secure?” The next logical question becomes: Can WooCommerce security issues be resolved? We’re happy to report that finding the right eCommerce development team can significantly increase your defense so that CRM and all its plugins follow HIPAA best practices. 

Many important steps can be taken in order to protect PHI and satisfy HIPAA security requirements. These actions may be administrative, physical, and technical, each providing extra layers of data protection integrity and confidentiality. Here is a non-exhaustive list of what you can do to become HIPAA compliant. 

  • Access to ePHI should be prohibited to unauthorized individuals, with multi-level authentication practices put in place. 
  • A log activity list should be available at all times to keep HIPAA logging requirements. 
  • Uploaded ePHI should be encrypted on an external server. 
  • In the case where a third-party company is used as a host — or any other situation that grants access to ePHI — a business associate agreement (BAA) is required. 
  • All administrators and internal users of the websites and the HIPAA-compliant eCommerce platform should be made aware of government guidelines and trained to comply with requirements fully. 
  • Risks regarding confidentiality, integrity, and availability of ePHI should be identified by performing a risk analysis on the website and all associated systems that interact with it. 
  • Security patches should be implemented whenever platforms and/or software are integrated. ;

A HIPAA Developer Can Help

On-site storage of hard drives and administrative training are two aspects of HIPAA security that a development team can't fix. What we can do is implement the latest software security measures. Let us help with your WooCommerce security issues.

Click to Get a Quote
image description
TOOLS AND GUIDELINES FOR A HIPAA COMPLIANT WEBSITE

Can WordPress Become HIPAA Compliant?

As mentioned earlier, WooCommerce security issues pose challenges towards complete ePHI security and HIPAA compliance. Properly integrating WooCommerce and keeping WordPress security best practices, along with the help of an experienced developer, can result in a HIPAA compliant website.  WordPress sites that need to comply with HIPAA regulations can take the following actions: 

  • Portal audits can check for unforeseen vulnerabilities by running a security scan. 
  • Ensure all plugins used for the website and the eCommerce platform are updated to the latest available version (including WordPress itself). 
  • Prohibit users from signing up for accounts without proper verification of their identity. 
  • Store ePHI (in whichever form provided) physically outside of the WooCommerce environment by using encryption in transit. The processes developers use allow for WooCommerce HIPAA eCommerce integration, leveraging all aspects of making WooCommerce more secure and implementing external tokenization integration. This helps ensure ePHI data is kept separate from the eCommerce data stored for WooCommerce. 

The user interface and overall presentation of the data can be seamless, allowing end-users to experience a streamlined process of inputting their data on the website (or check out from the eCommerce platform). The secure ePHI data will be easily available via a separate API and used by internal and other line-of-business applications, enterprise resource management (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and electronic medical or health records (EMR/EHR).

ADDRESS WOOCOMMERCE SECURITY FROM THE BEGINNING

Clarity Can Help

Violating HIPAA can be a huge headache, destroy your reputation, and incur steep fines from the government. There’s no need to abandon your WooCommerce WordPress integration just because of WooCommerce security issues. There is a solution out there; you just need to find the right developer to do your EHR/EMR integration and secure WC and WP

We're ready to take on the challenge of integrating the software or SaaS you're using. Clarity offers custom eCommerce solutions and tackles some of the back-office integration projects that other developers turn away. We can help even further by offering additional eCommerce solutions such as WooCommerce Salesforce and WooCommerce Slack. We’re ready to help, so get in touch.

Clarity providing a complaint HIPAA website

Make Sure You’re HIPAA-ready

A site requiring HIPAA compliance should never be launched before all security protocols are in place. If you need PHI data security for your WooCommerce integration, Clarity is ready to help.

Click Here to Schedule a Demo

Recent Search

HIPAA Compliance AngularJS Web Development ERP Sage Integrations Microsoft Dynamics Xamarin Framework Comparison Essential Website Features

Top Searches

B2B Supply Chain Management WooCommerce Integrations Catalog Product Tags Top B2B eCommerce Challenges Epic Integrations Optimizing Mobile Apps