HIPAA Security Checklist

Understand SOC 2 compliance and how Careful Security helps SaaS teams achieve readiness in just 90 days.

What Is the HIPAA Security Checklist and How Can Your Organization Meet Its Requirements?

The HIPAA Security Rule requires covered entities and business associates to protect electronic protected health information (ePHI) through administrative, physical, and technical safeguards. Meeting HIPAA isn’t just a compliance checkbox, it’s an operational discipline that reduces patient risk, protects trust, and avoids costly regulatory penalties. A practical HIPAA program ties required safeguards to real-world controls: risk analysis and management, least-privilege access, encryption and integrity controls, logging and monitoring, workforce training, and tested incident response and contingency planning.

For many health-technology and healthcare teams, the challenge is turning regulatory language into prioritized, measurable work that engineering, security, and operations can actually deliver. Careful Security translates HIPAA obligations into a concise checklist and remediation roadmap that your team can execute, with clear evidence for auditors and partners. We focus on high-impact gaps first so you strengthen protections quickly while building repeatable processes that scale with your product and patient growth.

The Core Requirements

HIPAA’s Security Rule is organized around three safeguard categories and several required and addressable standards:
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‍Administrative safeguards
‍Risk analysis & risk management
Security policies and procedures
Workforce training and sanctions
Contingency planning (BC/DR)
Assigned security responsibility (security officer)
‍Physical safeguards
‍Facility access controls
Device and media controls (disposal and reuse)
Workstation security
‍Technical safeguards
‍Access controls (unique user IDs, emergency access)
Audit controls (logging and monitoring)
Integrity controls (checksums, versioning)
Transmission security (encryption in transit)
Authentication and automatic logoff
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Every organization must document how each standard is implemented (or why an addressable standard is not reasonably applicable) and maintain evidence to show auditors.

Practical HIPAA Security Checklist

Start with high-impact items that auditors and investigators frequently evaluate:
Perform a documented risk analysis — identify threats, vulnerabilities, and business impact to ePHI.
Implement risk management and remediation tracking — produce a prioritized risk register and timeline.
‍Enforce least-privilege access — role-based access, just-in-time where possible, and regular entitlement reviews.
Enable comprehensive logging & monitoring — retain, centralize, and alert on access and anomalous activity affecting ePHI.
‍Encrypt sensitive data — encryption at rest and in transit (and documented KMS practices).
Harden endpoints and cloud configs — remove public exposure, enforce secure defaults, and apply patching policy.
‍Establish policies & workforce training — documented policies plus recurring HIPAA security training and tests.
Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) — ensure all 3rd parties handling ePHI have signed BAAs and controls validated.
Contingency & incident response — testable runbooks, backups, and incident escalation mapped to breach notification requirements.
‍Device & media control — procedures for mobile devices, removable media, and secure disposal.
‍Use this checklist as a living playbook — repeat risk analysis and validation after each major change.

Common HIPAA Pitfalls

No formal, documented risk analysis — leaving the organization unable to justify decisions or prioritize fixes.
‍Overly broad access and admin privileges — common source of exposure and audit findings.
‍Missing or incomplete BAAs — downstream vendors commonly introduce compliance risk.
‍Insufficient logging or short retention — prevents forensic analysis and weakens breach notification posture.
‍Lack of tested incident response — organizations discover gaps only during an incident.
‍Treating HIPAA as a one-time project — compliance requires continuous governance and evidence maintenance.

The Careful Security HIPAA Approach

We operationalize HIPAA compliance with a pragmatic, evidence-first model:

‍Phase 1 — Gap & Risk Assessment
Document your current controls, run a formal HIPAA-focused risk analysis, and produce an executive-friendly risk register.
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‍Phase 2 — Remediation & Policy Alignment
Prioritize fixes, create or update security policies and BAAs, and implement technical controls (IAM, encryption, logging).

‍Phase 3 — Validate & Train
Validate controls via tests (configuration checks, log validation, tabletop IR exercises) and deliver role-based training.

‍Phase 4 — Ongoing Assurance
Set up continuous monitoring, entitlement reviews, and scheduled reassessments so compliance evidence is current for auditors.

We emphasize rapid, measurable wins (e.g., closing highest-risk access gaps, enabling logging/encryption) while building the governance needed for sustained compliance.