§170.210 Standards for health information technology to protect electronic health information created, maintained, and exchanged. The Secretary adopts the following standards to protect electronic health information created, maintained, and exchanged.
(a) Encryption and decryption of electronic health information—
(1) General. Any encryption algorithm identified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as an approved security function in Annex A of the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) Publication 140-2 (incorporated by reference in §170.299).
(2) Exchange. Any encrypted and integrity protected link.
(b) Record actions related to electronic health information. The date, time, patient identification, and user identification must be recorded when electronic health information is created, modified, accessed, or deleted; and an indication of which action(s) occurred and by whom must also be recorded.
(c) Verification that electronic health information has not been altered in transit. Standard. A hashing algorithm with a security strength equal to or greater than SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-1) as specified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in FIPS PUB 180-3 (October, 2008)) must be used to verify that electronic health information has not been altered.
(d) Record treatment, payment, and health care operations disclosures. The date, time, patient identification, user identification, and a description of the disclosure must be recorded for disclosures for treatment, payment, and health care operations, as these terms are defined at 45 CFR 164.501.
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