Hosting & Infrastructure
Public Cloud
Shared, multi-tenant cloud infrastructure; can host PHI under a BAA with proper configuration.
A public cloud is cloud infrastructure operated by a provider and shared among many customers on a multi-tenant basis, such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Resources are pooled and delivered on demand.
Public cloud can host PHI in a HIPAA-compliant way, but only under a signed BAA and correct configuration of encryption, access controls, and logging. The shared-responsibility model means the customer still owns securing their own workloads.