Re: PostgresSQL and HIPAA compliance

> On Jun 17, 2016, at 3:03 AM, Alex John <alex.john@holmusk.com> wrote:
>
> Hello, I have a few questions regarding the use of PostgreSQL and HIPAA
> compliance. I work for a company that plans on storing protected health
> information (PHI) on our servers. We have looked at various solutions for doing
> so, and RDS is a prime candidate except for the fact that they have explicitly
> stated that the Postgres engine is *not* HIPAA compliant.

There's nothing fundamental to postgresql that would make HIPAA compliance
difficult, and *probably* nothing major with the way it's deployed on RDS. Actual
certification takes time and money, though.

>
> Users on the IRC channel generally say that the guidelines are more catered
> towards building better firewalls and a sane access policy, but I would like to
> know if there is anything within the implementation of Postgres itself that
> violates said compliance.
>
> If anyone works at a similar company and utilizes postgresql to store PHI,
> please let me know.

EnterpriseDB are helping provide HIPAA compliant postgresql on AWS; it
might be worth having a chat with them.

http://www.enterprisedb.com/postgres-plus-edb-blog/fred-dalrymple/postgres-meets-hipaa-cloud
http://www.slideshare.net/EnterpriseDB/achieving-hipaa-compliance-with-postgres-plus-cloud-database

Cheers,
  Steve