Email authentication for healthcare organizations

Protect patient data, prevent phishing attacks, and maintain HIPAA compliance with automated email security.

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Healthcare email systems carry life-or-death stakes. You’re safeguarding Protected Health Information (PHI), coordinating patient care across providers, managing prescription communications, processing insurance claims and billing, and maintaining trust with patients who’ve entrusted you with their most sensitive information.

Your email infrastructure connects physicians communicating about patient care, administrative staff processing insurance and billing, lab technicians sending test results, pharmacy systems coordinating prescriptions, patient portals sending appointment reminders and health alerts, and external partners including insurance providers and medical device vendors. 

One compromised email can expose thousands of patient records.

IT and security teams in healthcare protect highly valuable data that cybercriminals specifically target, maintain HIPAA compliance where violations mean massive fines, manage legacy systems, coordinate across multiple facilities and provider networks, and work with limited budgets.

Healthcare organizations need email authentication that protects patient data, meets regulatory requirements, and works reliably across complex provider networks.

Healthcare email security challenges

• Phishing target: Healthcare is the most attacked industry for phishing. Around 90% of healthcare organizations have experienced at least one data breach within the last two years.
• HIPAA compliance: A single email-based breach exposing PHI can result in fines up to $1.5 million per violation category per year. 
• Ongoing patient care: Patient care coordination, prescription communications, and critical test results need to flow reliably even during security implementations.
• Legacy medical systems: Legacy systems weren’t built with modern authentication in mind and can’t easily be replaced.
• Third-party ecosystems: Healthcare relies on countless external partners. Each one potentially sends email on your behalf, creating authentication challenges.
• Reputation and trust: When patients receive spoofed emails pretending to be from your hospital or clinic, it damages the trust relationship that healthcare depends on.

DMARC built for healthcare compliance and security

Valimail protects healthcare organizations without disrupting patient care or creating HIPAA compliance risks.

Challenge	Traditional approach	Valimail solution
HIPAA compliance	Manual processes, compliance anxiety	Automated authentication, no PHI storage
Phishing prevention	Security training, reactive detection	Proactive domain authentication
Legacy systems	Complex workarounds, high risk	Works with existing infrastructure
Third-party vendors	Manual vendor coordination	Automated sender identification and authorization
Patient care continuity	Risk of email disruptions	Zero-downtime implementation
Budget constraints	Enterprise pricing or risky DIY	Healthcare-friendly pricing
Data breach prevention	Hope breach detection catches it	Prevent domain spoofing before breach occurs

• Be HIPAA-conscious: Valimail doesn’t store your data or require access to PHI. We provide the email authentication controls that help prevent unauthorized PHI access.
• Stop phishing: Block the spoofed emails that impersonate your providers, request patient information, or trick staff into exposing sensitive data.
• Eliminate PHI risk: Our implementation process doesn’t require access to patient data, medical records, or any protected health information. We work entirely at the DNS and authentication level.
• Integrate with EHR systems: Valimail integrates with existing healthcare IT infrastructure, including EHR platforms, patient portals, and medical device notification systems.
• Automate vendor management: Healthcare organizations work with dozens of third-party services. Valimail automatically identifies these services and simplifies email authorization.
• Avoid patient care disruption: Implement DMARC enforcement without affecting patient communications like prescription notifications, test results, appointment reminders.
• Implement quickly: Healthcare organizations using Valimail reach DMARC enforcement 4x faster than manual implementation, with some achieving protection in as little as 47 business days.

Valimail Enforce provides healthcare organizations with automated DMARC protection designed for the complexity and compliance requirements of the medical industry.

How healthcare organizations use Valimail

“Valimail support was incredible during implementation and during the course of our subscription with them. They walked me through every step in setting up our DNS and M365. It took a while to get to the ‘Reject’ stage of non-legit emails (it’s to be expected if you want to capture everything you can) but even at the ‘Quarantine’ stage Valimail was blocking over 90% of all emails coming into our email server and they were all Spam or Malicious emails. We rarely received any spam after that! Truly a must have for every business using email.” — Verified User in Hospital & Health Care, G2

• Preventing data breaches: Phishers try to steal login credentials or trick employees into exposing patient data. DMARC enforcement blocks domain spoofing before these attacks reach inboxes.
• Protecting communications: Email spoofing can compromise prescription notifications. Authentication guarantees these communications are always legitimate.
• Securing communications: DMARC prevents attackers from impersonating your finance department or vendors for BEC attacks. 
• Managing authentication: Valimail provides centralized visibility and control across your entire network to unify authentication across all facilities.
• Meeting requirements: Valimail provides the authentication records and reporting needed to prove HIPAA security controls.
• Maintaining trust: When patients receive reminders, test results, or health alerts, they need to trust these emails are actually from their healthcare provider. DMARC protects these relationships.

“Valimail is a great solution to visualize the statistics of emails going through DMARC. It enabled us to see what is being caught up in DMARC whether that be malicious impersonation attempts or legitimate services and allows us to make those changes to the DNS record.” — Verified User in Mental Health Care, G2

Healthcare organizations using Valimail protect patient data and meet compliance requirements:

4x faster time to enforcement: Reach DMARC enforcement in 45 days median instead of the 300-600 days typical with manual implementation.

45 median days to enforcement: Most Valimail customers reach DMARC enforcement at a mediam time of 45 days to better protect patient communications and meet all compliance requirements.

90%+ phishing blocked: Healthcare customers report blocking over 90% of spam and malicious emails even at quarantine stage (and that’s before moving to full enforcement).

87% of customers reach enforcement: Valimail’s automation and support help the majority of healthcare organizations achieve (and maintain) full DMARC protection.

Zero PHI exposure: Implementation process requires no access to patient data, medical records, or protected health information.

Pricing for healthcare organizations

Valimail’s pricing is designed for healthcare budgets and procurement processes.

• Healthcare-friendly pricing: Transparent pricing designed for hospital systems, clinics, and healthcare providers.
• Start free with Monitor: Get complete visibility into all your sending services at no cost. No trial limits, no credit card required.
• Scale across facilities: Deploy authentication across multiple hospitals, clinics, and provider networks with centralized management and billing.
• Flexible procurement: We work with healthcare procurement processes and group purchasing organizations common in the medical industry.

Security and compliance for healthcare

• HIPAA-conscious implementation: Our process never requires access to PHI or patient data, maintaining HIPAA compliance throughout implementation.
• SOC 2, PCI, GDPR compliant: Regular audits guarantee we meet all security and privacy frameworks required for protecting sensitive healthcare information.
• FedRAMP authorized: We’re the only DMARC vendor with FedRAMP authorization, which matters for healthcare organizations with federal partnerships or VA contracts.
• Trusted by major health systems: Northwestern Medicine, UF Health, AdventHealth, Indiana University Health, and MVP Health Care trust Valimail to protect their patient communications.

Protect your healthcare organization

Schedule a demo with our team to see how Valimail works with healthcare IT infrastructure and meets HIPAA compliance requirements. Or start with free visibility into all your sending services with Valimail Monitor. No credit card, no commitment, no access to PHI required.

Additional resources

1. DMARC in healthcare: Securing email for hospitals and clinics
2. What is PII? How to safeguard personal data in emails
3. Valimail domain checker

Common healthcare questions

How does DMARC help with HIPAA compliance?

DMARC isn’t explicitly required by HIPAA, but it’s a powerful security control for protecting PHI. DMARC prevents unauthorized use of your domain, which helps satisfy HIPAA Security Rule requirements for protecting electronic PHI from unauthorized access. It also provides audit trails for compliance documentation.

Does implementing Valimail require access to patient data?

No. Valimail works entirely at the DNS and email authentication level. We never require access to patient records, medical data, or any protected health information. Implementation is completely HIPAA-safe.

Will DMARC implementation disrupt patient care communications?

No. Valimail’s process ensures zero disruption to critical patient communications. We start with monitoring to identify all legitimate senders (including EHR systems, patient portals, and medical device notifications), authorize them, then move to enforcement only when we’re certain nothing will break.

How do we handle third-party vendors like labs and pharmacies?

Valimail automatically identifies third-party services sending email on your behalf—labs, pharmacies, billing services, insurance companies, medical device vendors. You can authorize them with one click instead of manually coordinating authentication with each vendor.

Can Valimail work with our EHR system?

Yes. Valimail integrates with existing healthcare IT infrastructure, including popular EHR platforms like Epic, Cerner, and Meditech. We identify and authorize the email notifications these systems send without requiring changes to the EHR itself.

What about legacy medical devices that send email alerts?

Valimail works with legacy infrastructure. Medical devices that send email notifications (lab equipment, monitoring systems, imaging devices) can be identified and authorized. We don’t require replacing or upgrading equipment to implement DMARC.

How does this protect against ransomware?

DMARC blocks the primary ransomware delivery method: phishing emails that trick staff into clicking malicious links or downloading infected attachments. By preventing domain impersonation, DMARC significantly reduces ransomware risk.

What’s the cost of not having DMARC?

The average cost of a healthcare data breach is $9.42 million (IBM, 2021). HIPAA violations can result in fines up to $1.5 million per violation category per year. The cost of implementing Valimail is a tiny fraction of what a single breach or violation would cost.