Virtual CISO services for healthtech and digital health.
For healthtech companies handling PHI and pursuing HIPAA, HITRUST, or SOC 2. Built for telehealth, EHR integrations, clinical SaaS, and life sciences vendors.
HIPAA Security Rule readiness, HITRUST CSF certification preparation, SOC 2 alongside HIPAA, BAA libraries, and PHI data-flow diagrams. Built from your actual architecture, not a generic healthtech template.
- HIPAA Security and Privacy Rule readiness
- HITRUST CSF certification preparation as a HIPAA upgrade path
- SOC 2 + HIPAA stacked in one engagement
- PHI data-flow diagrams from your real architecture
What we do for healthtech specifically.
HIPAA Security Rule readiness
Administrative, physical, and technical safeguards mapped end to end. Risk analysis tied to your actual data flows, not a Word template. We help you decide which Addressable safeguards to implement and document the rationale auditors and regulators expect.
HITRUST CSF as the HIPAA upgrade path
Most enterprise healthcare buyers (large payors, hospital systems, pharma) ask for HITRUST. We prep you for HITRUST r2 or e1 certification and align controls so the eventual HITRUST assessor finds a clean program instead of a HIPAA program with HITRUST gaps.
BAA library and vendor PHI review
A vendor inventory tiered by PHI access, BAA templates and tracking, and the workflow for evaluating new sub-processors before they touch your data. Most healthtech breaches happen at sub-processors. Most healthtech firms do not have a working BAA program. We close that gap.
PHI data-flow diagrams
Diagrams that show exactly where PHI enters your system, how it moves between services, where it is stored, who can access it, and how it leaves. Built from your actual AWS or GCP architecture. The single artifact that auditors, security questionnaires, and incident responders all want.
SOC 2 stacked on HIPAA
Most healthtech buyers want both. We run them together because the underlying controls overlap by 80%. One engagement, two attestations, no duplicated evidence work. Stacks ISO 27001 in too if European or insurance customers demand it.
Breach notification playbook
HIPAA breach response is regulated. The 60-day notification clock starts the moment you discover the incident. We write the playbook, run the tabletop, and lead response when an incident happens. Without this, your CTO is reading the HIPAA breach notification rule for the first time at 11pm on a Friday.
The four moments Healthtech companies pick up the phone.
A hospital system or large payor asked for HITRUST.
You have HIPAA covered, but the buyer wants HITRUST CSF certification, and you have 90 days. HITRUST is an order of magnitude more rigorous than HIPAA alone. We have done this conversion before and know which controls need building first.
You are integrating with an EHR (Epic, Cerner, Athena) and the security questionnaire is brutal.
EHR vendor security reviews are unlike any other procurement process. We answer them, defend the answers on the joint call with their security team, and own the relationship until you go live.
You are processing PHI but not sure if HIPAA technically applies.
Wellness apps, fitness data, life sciences workflows, clinical decision support tools. The line between PHI and PII is genuinely blurry, and getting it wrong on the wrong side costs a lot. We make the call, document the rationale, and align your controls accordingly.
You had a near-miss and now your CEO wants a real security program.
A misconfigured S3 bucket, a phishing attempt that almost worked, a security questionnaire that surfaced gaps you did not know about. We rebuild from there: incident response, identity controls, vendor reviews, board cadence. The post-incident moment is when the buy-in exists to do it right.
Frameworks we run for Healthtech.
HIPAA Security and Privacy Rules
Covered entity and business associate readiness. Administrative, physical, and technical safeguards. Risk analysis, breach notification playbook, BAA library, PHI flow diagrams. The baseline for any healthtech that touches PHI.
HITRUST r2 and e1
The certification large payors, hospital systems, and pharma demand. We prep you for HITRUST CSF certification and align the program so the assessor finds a clean implementation rather than HIPAA with HITRUST patches.
SOC 2 + HIPAA stack
Most healthtech buyers want both. We run SOC 2 alongside HIPAA because the controls overlap. One engagement, two attestations, no duplicated evidence work.
A typical healthtech engagement.
A digital health company with 45 employees, processing PHI through a telehealth and asynchronous-care platform on AWS, has HIPAA covered but a hospital system buyer is now asking for HITRUST. Their auditor draft surfaced 11 findings; they engage us 3 weeks before fieldwork. Week one: gap analysis tied to production evidence, not policy PDFs. Week two: BAA library cleanup, MFA enforcement on three forgotten admin accounts, PHI data-flow diagram, and policy rewrites that match how their engineering team actually deploys. The auditor cuts findings from 11 to 2 between draft and final. We then sign an Embedded retainer to lead them through HITRUST e1 certification over the following 6 months.
Score your Healthtech security readiness in 4 minutes.
Twenty questions, scored PDF in your inbox, realistic timeline to audit. Free.
Healthtech-specific questions.
What is the difference between HIPAA and HITRUST?
HIPAA is a federal law setting baseline expectations for handling PHI. HITRUST CSF is a private certification framework that prescribes how to implement HIPAA at a much higher rigor, plus controls from ISO 27001, NIST, and others. Most enterprise healthcare buyers (large payors, hospital systems, pharma) require HITRUST certification. HIPAA compliance does not equal HITRUST certification; HITRUST is a multi-month engagement with a third-party assessor.
Do you work with EHR integrations and EHR vendor security reviews?
Yes. Epic, Cerner, Athena, Meditech, and the smaller EHRs all have distinct security review processes. We answer the questionnaire, defend the answers on the joint call with their security team, and own the integration security relationship until you go live. This is one of the slowest parts of healthcare go-to-market and one of the highest-leverage places to have a vCISO.
Can you handle SOC 2 and HIPAA in parallel?
Yes. Most of our healthtech clients run SOC 2 and HIPAA together because most enterprise buyers want both and the underlying controls overlap heavily. Adding HITRUST on top is a natural sequence when buyer demand surfaces it.
What does a healthtech vCISO retainer cost?
Strategic vCISO at $5,000/mo. Embedded vCISO is custom-scoped (Inquire). Founding cohort pricing puts Strategic at $2,500/mo for 12 months. HITRUST certification engagements typically run as project-fee scoped work on top of retainer.
Do you have experience with PHI on AWS or GCP?
Yes. AWS and GCP both publish HIPAA-eligible service lists, sign BAAs, and provide reference architectures, but the implementation gaps that get healthtech companies in trouble are not in the AWS docs. We have worked with PHI on both clouds and know the common misconfigurations: S3 bucket policies, KMS key rotation, IAM role drift, default-VPC exposure.
Ready to talk about your healthtech program?
Three doors. Start with a $2,500 Sprint, apply for a founding retainer slot at 50% off, or take the free 4-minute SOC 2 Readiness Scorecard if you want a snapshot before talking to anyone.