Single-Tenant Hosting
A hosting model where one customer's environment runs on a server layer that no other tenant shares. HIPAA still requires a risk analysis.
Single-tenant hosting is a model where one customer's environment runs on a server layer that no other tenant shares. The opposite is multi-tenant hosting, where many customers share the same servers, as on consumer shared hosting plans.
HIPAA does not mandate single tenancy, but HHS says the type of cloud setup may affect the risk analysis. A single-tenant setup changes who shares the server layer. It does not remove the need to assess the risks. Other layers, such as storage or physical hardware, may still be shared. For health systems and healthtech teams, tenancy is the first of six infrastructure decisions to make before signing with a host. Single tenancy is one model that providers of HIPAA compliant hosting use for ePHI workloads. It is also one way to pass the isolation test, one of five in our guide to the best HIPAA compliant hosting providers.