How Liquid Web is Advancing HIPAA-Compliant Hosting Options

The following is a guest article by Kelly Goolsby from Liquid Web

HIPAA compliance is no longer optional—it’s foundational for any organization managing protected health information (PHI). From patient portals to telehealth platforms, hosting infrastructure must now meet not just technical requirements, but also operational, legal, and strategic demands. That’s where Liquid Web comes in.

With a tailored suite of HIPAA-compliant hosting solutions, Liquid Web helps healthcare providers, SaaS vendors, and business associates maintain uptime, secure sensitive data, and scale without compromising compliance.

What is HIPAA-compliant hosting?

HIPAA-compliant hosting refers to an IT environment that meets the specific security and privacy requirements set forth by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This law regulates how healthcare data—particularly PHI—is stored, accessed, transmitted, and monitored.

To be compliant, a hosting solution must support:

• Encrypted data transmission and storage, both at rest and in transit
• Access controls, such as role-based logins and multi-factor authentication
• Comprehensive audit logs that record system access and activity
• Signed Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) with hosting vendors
• Physical safeguards in secure data centers
• Disaster recovery and backup protocols
• Proactive monitoring and breach notification systems

HIPAA-compliant hosting isn’t just about one or two checkboxes. It’s a system-wide approach to security, reliability, and accountability, and it’s especially vital for electronic health records (EHRs), scheduling systems, medical billing platforms, and other care-critical tools.

How Liquid Web delivers leading HIPAA-compliant hosting

Liquid Web doesn’t just offer generalized hosting with HIPAA add-ons. Instead, its HIPAA-compliant solutions are purpose-built to meet the needs of healthcare organizations from the ground up.

Each HIPAA hosting package includes:

• VPN access, firewalls, and off-site encrypted backups to safeguard PHI
• Full disk encryption and secure file transfer protocols (SFTP)
• Intrusion detection systems and around-the-clock log monitoring
• Signed BAA and documented infrastructure controls
• Support for both HIPAA and HITECH compliance in a single environment

These services are fully managed, meaning Liquid Web takes responsibility for setup, configuration, security patching, and ongoing maintenance. This reduces your internal workload and ensures your infrastructure is always audit-ready.

What you really need from HIPAA-compliant hosting

For healthcare CIOs, IT directors, and compliance leads, choosing the right hosting partner means balancing clinical priorities with technical execution. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

1. Uptime that protects revenue and care delivery

Every second of downtime in healthcare has a ripple effect. Missed appointments, delayed test results, and stalled patient care aren’t just workflow issues—they’re health and business risks. In large systems, downtime costs can exceed $250,000 per hour.

Liquid Web addresses this with:

• A 99.99% uptime SLA
• Geo-redundant failover systems to maintain operations during localized outages
• A dedicated onboarding team to stabilize performance right from deployment

This level of reliability keeps patient-facing systems available and revenue streams flowing.

2. Compliance readiness that’s baked in

HIPAA enforcement isn’t hypothetical: it comes with real audits, fines, and public accountability. Many hosting providers offer partial compliance, but stop short of true infrastructure alignment.

Liquid Web builds for full readiness:

• Access controls, including unique user IDs and session timeouts
• Audit-ready logging of every login and file access event
• Encrypted PHI storage on HIPAA-certified infrastructure
• Signed BAA that documents the provider’s shared responsibility

This protects your organization during OCR audits, vendor risk assessments, or internal compliance reviews.

3. Scalable infrastructure without IT burnout

As healthcare organizations expand telehealth offerings, open new clinics, or roll out specialty programs, they need infrastructure that can grow fast—without adding engineering bottlenecks.

Liquid Web offers:

• Pre-configured scaling options for compute and storage resources
• Fully managed environments, so your DevOps team doesn’t need to intervene
• Support for custom architectures and high-demand SaaS platforms

That means your team can launch new initiatives faster and focus on care delivery—not building and maintaining infrastructure.

4. Proactive security that adapts to threats

PHI is among the most valuable and targeted types of data on the black market. While encryption is required by HIPAA, true data protection involves multiple layers of defense.

Liquid Web builds security into the environment by default:

• 24/7 proactive monitoring to detect anomalies in real time
• DDoS mitigation and traffic filtering at the network level
• Managed firewalls and regular vulnerability scans
• Timely patch management to prevent zero-day exploits

5. Predictable pricing for strategic planning

CapEx-heavy hosting models often leave healthcare CFOs guessing … and overpaying. As more organizations shift to OpEx budgeting, predictability and flexibility have become essential.

Liquid Web delivers:

• Transparent pricing with no surprise fees or usage overages
• Fixed monthly rates with easy-to-scale infrastructure
• A fully managed model that includes support, maintenance, and security

This allows IT and finance leaders to accurately forecast infrastructure spend and focus on ROI.

6. Support that relieves internal teams

Many healthcare organizations are running lean IT departments, which are constantly reacting to support tickets, software issues, and performance problems. This limits their ability to execute on larger strategic goals.

Liquid Web’s expert support includes:

• U.S.-based engineers available 24/7/365
• Help with migrations, configurations, and troubleshooting
• Real-time incident response and remediation

Why organizations trust Liquid Web with HIPAA hosting

For over 25 years, Liquid Web has been a trusted partner for highly regulated industries—including healthcare, insurance, and finance. Its HIPAA-compliant hosting solutions are engineered not only for today’s security landscape, but also for tomorrow’s healthcare delivery models.

Key advantages include:

• Single-tenant options for full data isolation
• Compliance-focused infrastructure managed by trained professionals
• Seamless scalability to support EHRs, telehealth, and medical SaaS platforms

Next steps for HIPAA-compliant hosting

HIPAA hosting is the foundation for delivering secure, modern care at scale. Organizations that take infrastructure seriously see better audit outcomes, lower breach risk, and faster time to value from their digital tools.

The next step is to choose a hosting solution that fits your needs, and that’s where Liquid Web comes in. They offer HIPAA-compliant hosting on one of the largest hosting platforms available—from secure VPS, to single-tenant dedicated servers, to VMware private cloud. That means you can get the security and compliance you need, at the right size and scope for your practice or business.

Liquid Web is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene