My wife and I are very excited as it looks like we may be able to go on a trip that we dreamed of for many years. We did our homework in the selection of the destination and the route. We even selected the meals that we will be eating during the trip and at the different locations that we will be visiting. Yet, as part of our research, we were surprised to find recommendations as it relates to our security and the scams we could face.

For example, pickpockets and stealing of valuables is common just about everywhere we plan on going. Of course, there are the more sophisticated thieves who prefer to minimize their risk and increase their profit by stealing data instead of valuables. Yet, I have heard from family and friends that at a moment of distraction they lost their laptops as they had the same in a carryon or backpack.

We are not planning on taking our laptops, but we will have our phones which have almost as much, potentially more, critical information. In order to protect the same, we have discussed many alternatives but one of the key ones we decided on is encryption of the data.

Encryption is crucial in protecting data. It locks or converts data into an unreadable format so only authorized parties with decryption keys can translate it back into plain text. In simpler words, encryption scrambles information into something that appears random alphanumeric gibberish to the human eye.

I must admit that we didn’t come up with this solution by ourselves nor by listening to the advice of experienced travelers. Instead, the idea came to me while working on a HIPAA Security training. It just happens that encryption is covered under the “Access Control” and “Transmission Security” Standards under HIPAA.

I looked further into HIPPA and the encryption requirement and found out that there have been many incidents regarding the loss of electronic devices that resulted in millions of dollars in settlements because the information in these devices was not encrypted.

The bottom line is that we are still looking forward to our trip and now thanks to HIPAA Security and encryption we will have a little more peace of mind knowing our data will be safe.

For more information about data encryption visit: https://epicompliance.com/resource-center.