Announcing Zix Deployment

To assist UC staff and our affiliates to ensure compliance with the HIPAA federal regulations concerning the safeguarding of personally identifiable health related information, UCit and the College of Medicine have partnered to implement an e-mail encryption service using appliances from the ZIX Corporation.
 
This affects UC e-mail users on the Exchange system who send and receive HIPAA-protected information. These users typically interact with users at The Health Alliance and UC Physicians. Since these partners are also employing ZIX appliances, all e-mail sent between the Exchange system and these partner sites is automatically encrypted before being sent.  The sender does not need to take any action to ensure that HIPAA information is being protected, thus facilitating a seamless, transparent service. Exchange e-mail accounts receiving Zix-encrypted mail from these partner sites will have it automatically de-crypted on receipt.
 
If any Exchange user wishes to ensure that the e-mail he or she is sending to a non-health care partner site  is encrypted, the sender need only place the word “encrypt” (without the quotes) followed by a space as the first word in the subject line. (e.g. Subject: encrypt Patient Jones test results).
 
Should an Exchange e-mail user send an e-mail to an external recipient at a site not using the ZIX solution, that recipient will receive an e-mail with a link to the UC secure messaging portal (https://securemail.uc.edu) The recipient will then have to create an account on the portal and then login to the portal to read the body of the message. From the portal he or she can then reply securely.   
 
Instructions for using the ZIX portal can be found at http://www.uc.edu/ucit/email/ZIX.html.

UC has a limited number of user licenses for this service and intends it to be used only for personally identifiable health related information, in conjunction with the Health Alliance and UC Physician domains. We will monitor usage accordingly.
 
UCit has prepared IT Coordinators in affected departments as well as general documentation providing details on the use of this service.  Please contact the UCit Help Desk at 556-HELP if you have comments or questions.  

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