Is Slack HIPAA Compliant? A Comprehensive Guide for Healthcare Professionals

Communication is a critical success factor for any organization. Effective communication enables employees to collaborate effectively, avoid misunderstandings, and ensure enterprise growth and success. Conversely, ineffective or poor communication can result in wasted time, productivity losses, and damaged reputations – costing U.S organizations a staggering $1.2 trillion annually. Fortunately, user-friendly online communication tools are available to help modern organizations enhance communications and avoid the costs of poor communications.

That said, organizations that work with highly sensitive data need to be extra careful about using such tools.

Consider the healthcare industry.

Healthcare organizations gather, process, and store vast quantities of sensitive and confidential electronic protected health information (ePHI). The compromise of this data, say, due to a breach, can be catastrophic, putting patients at risk of frauds and identity thefts, and increasing the organization’s risk of a HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) violation. To prevent such compromises, these organizations need to protect their PHI and ensure that their communications tools are HIPAA compliant.

Take Slack as an example.

Slack is a popular cloud-based communications platform used by 200K+ paid customers in 150+ countries . Its easy-to-use interface and collaborative features simplify business communications in many industries – including healthcare. Slack is also useful for automating manual processes and to eliminate workflow bottlenecks.

But before deploying Slack in their communications stack, healthcare organizations must first consider its HIPAA implications.

This means asking:

Is Slack HIPAA compliant?

If not, what are some alternatives that can help them to overcome their Slack HIPAA concerns?

Read on to learn more!

Security Features in Slack

Enacted in 1996 and administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), HIPAA sets national standards to protect the PHI of U.S. citizens from unauthorized access and disclosure. HIPAA compliance is mandatory for all healthcare providers, known as covered entities (CEs), and their business associates (BAs).

To achieve and maintain HIPAA compliance, CEs and BAs must ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and security of ePHI. And for this, they must implement appropriate security safeguards and ensure that their communications apps incorporate robust security features.

Does Slack make the cut?

Well, Slack includes several security features to protect ePHI and enable healthcare organizations to maintain HIPAA compliance.

One, all data, both at-rest and in-transit, is encrypted in Slack. Its Enterprise Key Management (EKM) feature enables organizations to control and manage how their data is accessed in Slack.

Next, Slack provides numerous customizable features to help admins control permissions and roles, manage apps and workflows, and customize data retention. They can also use its granular access controls to create information barriers, view access logs, and enforce domain-wide two-factor authentication (2FA) for additional security.

Three, Slack’s native data loss prevention (DLP) feature reduces the risk of confidential information being inadvertently shared or leaked.

Finally, Slack provides over 2,500 integrations with popular security tools that enable healthcare CEs and BAs to further protect sensitive information, control data access, and ensure secure collaboration.

Is Slack HIPAA Compliant by Default?

Its many security features notwithstanding, there is a downside to Slack that healthcare organizations must take cognizance of.

Slack is not HIPAA compliant by default. 

To make Slack HIPAA compliant, healthcare CEs and BAs need to join Slack’s Enterprise Grid plan. This is Slack’s solution that offers the advanced security features necessary to support Slack HIPAA compliance.

In addition, they must sign Slack’s Business Associate Agreement (BAA) that clarifies their (and Slack’s) responsibilities in protecting PHI.

Finally, they must configure Slack to use it in a HIPAA-regulated environment by:

• getting the full list of requirements from Slack by filling out the form here
• adopting some best practices that are proven to simplify the compliance journey

Best Practices to Achieve and Maintain HIPAA Compliance on Slack

Wired calls corporate Slack accounts “a treasure trove for attackers if compromised”. Healthcare organizations can protect their treasure by strengthening their security measures and deploying HIPAA compliant Slack. Here’s where the below best practices come in:

Regularly update security protocols

Organizations need to ensure that their Slack instance includes up-to-date security features and policies. Only then can they keep their PHI protected from new and emerging threats. Other ways to secure PHI and maintain HIPAA compliance:

• Provide Slack with a list of all Slack orgs or workspaces where PHI will be used
• Monitor access, activity, and data using the APIs provided in Slack Enterprise Grid
• Implement appropriate controls when using shared channels between separate companies or workspaces.
• Set channels where PHI may be shared as “private”

Conduct regular HIPAA training

HIPAA compliance and PHI protection start with user awareness. Ongoing training programs are essential to educate users about HIPAA regulations and to ensure that they use and configure Slack in HIPAA compliant ways.

Perform regular audits and risk assessments

Ongoing audits and risk assessments can reveal if HIPAA violations are taking place. Assessments also enable decision-makers to determine what actions are needed to use Slack in a secure and HIPAA compliant manner.

FAQs About Slack and HIPAA Compliance

HIPAA-compliant Communications: Alternatives to Slack

Healthcare organizations can avoid the complexity of Slack HIPAA compliance by looking beyond Slack. Many tools are available that like Slack, include numerous robust security features. Additionally, unlike Slack, there’s no need to purchase special plans or sign complex BAAs to ensure secure, HIPAA-compliant communications.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams includes numerous built-in capabilities that support HIPAA compliance and strengthen existing safeguards for sensitive data. These include:

• 1:1 and group chats: Private data is always protected, regardless of the chat type.
• Message tags: Message senders can tag messages by recipient’s department, role, skill, or shift to ensure that the message reaches only the intended person.
• Priority messaging: Senders can mark messages as “urgent” to alert the recipient to important requests.
• Read receipts: Senders can check if the recipient has read a message and then initiate appropriate follow-up action.
• Image annotation: Images can be annotated and shared on a secure platform to prevent misuse and compromise.

In addition, all Teams licensing agreements include a HIPAA BAA by default. In this BAA, Microsoft provides assurances about data safeguarding, data access, and reporting.

Zoom for Healthcare

Zoom for Healthcare enables healthcare entities to strengthen access control and safeguard the integrity of sensitive ePHI by:

• Creating various roles and implementing minimum necessary access privileges to control PHI access.
• Preventing privilege misuse through event monitoring, logging, and alerting.
• Using customer-managed keys (CMK) to protect data-at-rest.
• Protecting data and service layers with multilayer integration protection.
• Enabling 2FA to prevent unauthorized access.

Zoom also includes features to help organizations achieve HIPAA compliance. For instance, they can block users authenticated with specific domains from joining meetings. They can also prevent users with sensitive information from communicating with others who are not part of designated groups.

RingCentral

RingCentral is an AI-powered communications solution with capabilities for secure team communications and HIPAA compliance. These include:

• Administrative controls to protect multichannel collaboration
• Stringent data privacy policies to prevent data compromise
• Multi-layered network security program to control access to RingCentral’s networks
• Encryption for data-in-transit and data-at-rest using industry-leading encryption standards
• Enterprise-grade security protocols to provide additional security for IP phone calls

Furthermore, RingCentral undergoes annual third-party audits to ensure that its platform and services remain HIPAA-compliant.

Conclusion

This article explores how healthcare organizations risk HIPAA violations and data breaches with Slack. The sector is already the top target for data breaches and incurs a higher average breach cost ($9.77 million in 2024) than any other industry. This is why organizations need to look at Slack alternatives to protect their PHI and engage in secure, HIPAA-compliant communications.

It’s also useful to adopt security solutions designed to protect Slack data. SpinOne for Slack is an all-in-one security platform that secures Slack data against losses, misconfigurations, and third-party risk, and ensures uninterrupted business continuity in case of accidental or intentional data loss.

Want to know how SpinOne for Slack offers complete protection for your Slack instance? Ask us for a free demo!