Private Psychiatric Clinic Dr. med Kurt Fontheim embraces secure email communication

Clinics, care homes and other health-care institutions are continuously communicating confidential patient data with insurance companies and government agencies. “We need to communicate with insurance companies and agencies using encrypted emails, even when the recipient doesn’t own an S/MIME certificate or PGP key”, explained Jörg Rösch, IT manager at the clinic.

Secure Email in Healthcare

Patient records contain very personal and confidential information. In order to meet compliance requirements when exchanging data with healthcare agencies and organizations, it is absolutely vital to use secure and encrypted emails. The challenge for Dr. med. Fontheim psychiatric clinic was that not all communication partners owned keys or certificates for PKI based email encryption. However it was important for the clinic to be able to communicate securely with these partners.

Simple password based email encryption required

During the extensive research, a number of encryption solutions from diverse manufacturers were identified and evaluated. The solution from Zertificon impressed the Dr. med. Fontheim Clinic with its extensive set of features for password based email encryption. The simple administration and the fact that the users do not require any special IT knowledge or training all spoke in favor of the Z1 product. The quality of the solution was underscored by the list of satisfied reference clients who had similar requirements and infrastructures. In addition Zertificon’s cost-benefit ratio was clearly better than the competitor’s.

Z1 SecureMail Gateway delivers efficient Email encryption

The clinic selected the Z1 SecureMail Gateway extended with Z1 Messenger. The central server based solution delivers economic and efficient encryption for every email which leaves or enters the clinic. Alongside the S/MIME or OpenPGP encryption, the Z1 Messenger component enables secure and confidential communication without encryption keys. The Z1 Messenger extension guarantees that all sensitive data which is sent to communication partners is fully encrypted, even if the partner does not have any PKI technology. Passwords are used to fully replace the certificates and keys. After evaluating the email throughput and volume, the Z1 Appliance SMA 500 was selected as the hardware platform.

Deployment and Use

Zertificon’s partner TELCAT MULTICOM GmbH installed the Z1 SecureMail Gateway at the clinic and within six hours the solution was up and running. All employees were immediately able to send encrypted emails. Recipients without any PKI keys or certificates now receive password encrypted emails and are also able to send encrypted replies.

Secure transfer of patient records

“Thanks to the Z1 solution, we’re able at last to use a platform independent solution to comply with all data protection laws when sending patient data to government agencies, hospitals and doctors. The Z1 Solution is perfect when we need to make information available quickly, easily and securely” summed up Jörg Rösch.