Protect Patient Trust and Meet HIPAA Email Requirements
Healthcare organizations handle the most sensitive personal data — and attackers know it. SimpleDMARC prevents domain spoofing that leads to patient phishing, fake appointment emails, insurance fraud, and HIPAA breaches. Protect your patients and your reputation.
Healthcare Is the #1 Target for Email-Based Attacks
10.9M — Average cost of a healthcare data breach (IBM 2024)
89% — Of healthcare orgs experienced email-based attacks
Why Patient-Facing Email Needs Authentication
When a patient receives an email from billing@yourhospital.com, they trust it implicitly. They'll click links, enter insurance details, pay balances, and share symptoms. Attackers exploit this trust to steal medical identities, insurance credentials, and payment information.
DMARC at p=reject ensures that only your authorized systems — your EHR notifications, patient portal, appointment reminders, billing platform, and telehealth system — can send email as your domain. Anything else gets blocked before it ever reaches a patient's inbox.
SimpleDMARC discovers every system sending email as your domain, helps you authorize legitimate ones, and moves you to full enforcement without disrupting clinical workflows.
HIPAA, HITECH & Email Authentication
While HIPAA doesn't explicitly mandate DMARC, the Security Rule requires covered entities to implement technical safeguards that protect ePHI. Email authentication is increasingly cited by HHS in enforcement actions and OCR guidance.
SimpleDMARC provides technical safeguard evidence for HIPAA Security Rule audits, audit-ready compliance documentation, BAA-compatible architecture (no ePHI processed — only email metadata), and multi-domain support for health system parent/subsidiary structures.
Measurable Impact for Healthcare Organizations
Protect patient communications and meet compliance requirements without disrupting clinical workflows.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is DMARC required for HIPAA compliance?
HIPAA doesn't explicitly mandate DMARC, but the Security Rule (§164.312) requires covered entities to implement technical safeguards to protect electronic protected health information (ePHI). DMARC is increasingly cited by HHS/OCR as an expected technical control. Many healthcare cybersecurity frameworks (NIST, HITRUST) include DMARC as a recommended baseline, and cyber insurance policies for healthcare often require it.
Does SimpleDMARC process any patient health information (PHI)?
No. SimpleDMARC only processes email authentication metadata — IP addresses, domain names, and pass/fail results. We never access, store, or transmit any email content, patient data, or ePHI. Because no PHI is processed, SimpleDMARC does not require a Business Associate Agreement (BAA), though we are happy to provide one upon request.
How does DMARC protect patients from phishing attacks?
DMARC prevents attackers from sending fake emails that appear to come from your hospital or clinic domain. Without DMARC, an attacker can send an email as billing@yourhospital.com asking patients to update their insurance information or pay a fake balance — and the patient has no way to know it's fake. With DMARC at p=reject, these spoofed emails are blocked by the patient's email provider before delivery.
Can SimpleDMARC handle our complex health system email infrastructure?
Yes. Health systems often have dozens of sending sources — EHR systems (Epic, Cerner, Athenahealth), patient portals, telehealth platforms, billing services, marketing tools, and department-specific senders. SimpleDMARC discovers all of these, helps you authorize legitimate ones, and provides SPF flattening to handle the 10-lookup limit that multi-source environments frequently exceed.
How long does DMARC deployment take for a hospital?
Initial setup is under 5 minutes per domain via CNAME delegation. For health systems with multiple hospitals and clinics, you can deploy across all domains in a single day. The full journey to p=reject enforcement typically takes 6-12 weeks as you identify and authorize all legitimate sending sources across your health system.
What happens to legitimate emails during DMARC implementation?
Nothing changes until you're ready. SimpleDMARC starts at p=none (monitoring only), which doesn't affect any email delivery. You use the monitoring data to identify all legitimate senders, configure their authentication properly, and only move to enforcement (p=quarantine, then p=reject) once you've confirmed everything is authenticated. No patient communications are disrupted.