What methods are used to ensure protected health information (PHI) is unreadable and unusable to unauthorized individuals?

The approved methods for ensuring that protected health information (PHI) is unreadable and unusable to unauthorized individuals include encryption and destruction.

Encryption is a vital technique where data is transformed into a format that is unreadable without the proper decryption key. This means even if unauthorized individuals gain access to the data, they cannot interpret it without having the necessary credentials to decrypt it. This protects the confidentiality of PHI during its storage and transmission.

Destruction is another critical method, which involves permanently erasing data so that it cannot be recovered by anyone, thus rendering it completely unusable. This is particularly important when PHI is no longer needed or after a specified retention period, ensuring that sensitive information does not remain accessible indefinitely.

Both encryption and destruction form a secure approach to managing PHI, thereby fulfilling the requirements set by laws and regulations to protect patient privacy. Other options, while possibly related to data security, do not provide the same level of protection for making PHI unreadable and unusable to those who should not access it.