Why Ghost CMS needs a HIPAA host, not a generic one
Ghost is a publishing platform with a members database attached. For a health organisation, the membership list is often the sensitive part, not the posts.
A members list is patient data
Ghost stores members, their email addresses and their subscription history. For a clinic newsletter or a condition-specific programme, the mere fact that someone subscribed can reveal a health condition, which makes the list itself sensitive.
Ghost(Pro) is shared infrastructure
The hosted Ghost service is multi-tenant and does not offer a Business Associate Agreement. Self-hosting on an environment dedicated to you is what lets a covered entity document where the member data actually sits.
Email and integrations are an exit route
Newsletters, webhooks and Zapier-style integrations move member data off the platform. We run the infrastructure and the logging around it so the paths out are visible; which integrations you enable stays your call.
Where our responsibility ends
Stated plainly, because knowing this before an incident is worth more than discovering it during one.
We run
- The AWS account, VPC and network isolation
- The operating system, patching and hardening
- Node.js, the process manager, the database and TLS
- CloudFront, the WAF, encryption, audit logging and backups
- Monitoring and infrastructure incident response
You run
- Your Ghost site, theme and members configuration
- Ghost core and integration updates, unless scoped with us
- Posts, members, tiers and staff access
- The newsletter and analytics services you connect and the data you send them
If a problem turns out to be the server, the Node runtime or the infrastructure, open a ticket and we take it. If it is inside Ghost, we tell you what we found and hand it back with recommendations.
HIPAA hosting vs standard hosting
A $10 shared plan is not slightly less compliant; it is categorically different. Most mainstream hosts will not sign a BAA for shared hosting at any price.
Standard Hosting
Basic web hosting
HIPAA Compliant Hosting
Healthcare-grade security