HIPAA technical safeguards
By Sam Rivera, Founder, SentinelPanda · June 19, 2026 · 1 min read · HIPAA
The technical safeguards are the engineering half of HIPAA — and they map almost one-to-one onto the access, logging, and encryption controls you already build.
The engineering safeguards
The HIPAA technical safeguards are the controls your engineering team implements in the systems that handle ePHI. They cover five areas: access control, audit controls, integrity, person/entity authentication, and transmission security — the technical defences around the data.
What they require in practice
- Access control: unique user IDs, role-based access to ePHI, automatic logoff, and (addressable) encryption.
- Audit controls: logging of access to and activity on ePHI systems.
- Integrity: protecting ePHI from improper alteration or destruction.
- Authentication: verifying users are who they claim — MFA is the modern answer.
- Transmission security: encryption of ePHI in transit.
Required vs addressable
HIPAA labels some specifications "required" and others "addressable" — addressable does not mean optional, it means you implement it or document why an equivalent is reasonable. Encryption, for example, is addressable, but in practice not encrypting ePHI is very hard to justify; treat it as expected.
You probably have most of it
Unique logins, RBAC, audit logging, encryption, and MFA are the same controls SOC 2 and PCI expect — so a security-mature company has most technical safeguards already. The HIPAA work is confirming they cover the ePHI systems and documenting them. SentinelPanda maps the technical safeguards to your existing controls and evidence.