Healthtech: SOC2 + HIPAA-Ready Infrastructure in 8 Weeks
A digital health platform had a pending enterprise contract contingent on HIPAA attestation. Their AWS infrastructure had no audit logging, PHI was stored without encryption at the application layer, and secrets were in environment variables in plaintext.
The Challenge
The engineering team was small and competent but had never built compliance infrastructure before. The technical problems were solvable - encrypted storage, audit trails, secrets management - but the compliance documentation and audit process were unfamiliar territory. The contract deadline was 10 weeks out when they engaged us.
The Approach
We ran the compliance engagement as two parallel tracks: infrastructure remediation (fixing the actual security gaps) and documentation (producing the evidence an auditor needs to see). The infrastructure work was done in 6 weeks. The remaining 2 weeks were documentation, walkthrough preparation, and the enterprise security review.
The Implementation
Data encryption and PHI handling
We enabled encryption at rest for all RDS instances and S3 buckets using AWS KMS with customer-managed keys. We audited the application code to identify all PHI handling paths and added field-level encryption for the highest-sensitivity fields.
Secrets management
We replaced all environment variable secrets with AWS Secrets Manager. The application fetches secrets at startup via IAM role, not hardcoded credentials. We set up automatic rotation for database credentials.
Audit logging and monitoring
We enabled CloudTrail across all regions, set up AWS Config rules to detect configuration drift, and deployed GuardDuty for threat detection. Log retention was configured to meet the 6-year HIPAA requirement.
Access controls and network hardening
We refactored IAM roles to follow least-privilege principles. We tightened security groups to eliminate overly permissive rules. We deployed AWS WAF in front of the public API and set up VPC Flow Logs.
Key Takeaways
- Compliance is 70% infrastructure changes and 30% documentation - both are required
- AWS Secrets Manager rotation eliminated the single biggest credential exposure risk
- The enterprise security review passed on first attempt - thorough documentation made the difference
- HIPAA technical safeguards can be implemented in parallel without stopping product development
Facing Similar Challenges?
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