Windows 10: Windows 10 Home and HIPAA

So I've been seeing Win10 Enterprise is the only HIPAA compliant version. Is this true?


I have Win10 Home, from a store bought laptop. I'm using O365. My understanding is that by signing on with O365, the BAA for HIPAA is automatically signed, but I'm being told I need Win10Pro for MS to sign a BAA because Home isn't licensed for business use.


I feel like things aren't adding up. Can someone clarify or point me to the right places to learn for myself?

:)

 

Hipaa

I am studying for the nursing exam, and part of that is getting an understanding of HIPAA, especially patient records confidentiality.

From what I understand, Doctors, Nurses and Hospitals can send any patient information such as discharge or admission times, and certainly not any information about their medical issues, through a non-HIPAA compliant system.

Text messages between patient and doctors are a good example of this, since the data can be intercepted, or the information is stored on the phone and loosing the phone would be a breech of patient confidentiality.

Yet, I see it all the time in hospital and doctor’s offices, and I have received texts from doctors with confidential patient information.

As I was looking into this issue, I found that Tigertext.com provides a HIPAA compliant text messaging system that meets HIPAA rules, since the text messages self delete from the phone after they are read.

So, my questions are:

What is the penalty for breeching patient confidentially by sending normal text messages?
Tigertext cost $10 a month, which is very affordable, but should the hospital provide it to it’s staff, or should the doctors and nurses get it individually?
Will a hospital be HIPAA compliant if it doesn’t provide it for it’s staff?

The HIPAA Security rules are here:

http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/srsummary.html

http://www.tigertext.com/business/healthcare/

 

Windows 10 Tweaks

Pressing “Windows+Pause Break” (it’s up there next to scroll lock) opens the “System” Window.

Windows 10: In the new version of Windows, Explorer has a section called Quick Access. This includes your frequent folders and recent files. Explorer defaults to opening this page when you open a new window. If you’d rather open the usual This PC, with links to your drives and library folders, follow these steps:

• Open a new Explorer window.
• Click View in the ribbon.
• Click Options.
• Under General, next to “Open File Explorer to:” choose “This PC.”
• Click OK

credit to Lifehacker.

 

Windows 10 and HIPAA Compliance

As far as I can tell, Windows 10 out of the box will violate HIPAA. The reason: unless you bind your installation to a domain that has the business Microsoft account available to you, Windows 10 (with Cortana) will literally share any search results you
conduct with Bing. So if you do a records search containing private medical information on a non-bounded Windows 10 installation, your search is going to hit BING and get recorded.

So I advise you, and anyone else bound by HIPAA, to stay far, far, far away from Windows 10. There is no escape from it: you do a search, it's on Bing. Pray that you don't search for private for information on your local storage and have it indexed by
Bing for all to see.

You are warned.