The healthcare and encryption sometimes have a love-hate relationship. They need one another, but on occasion there’s friction. Heathcare provider user portals that require patients to remember yet another password, bookmark a website, and take a handful of extra steps just to send their doctor a follow-up note, are a stellar example of this friction.
At the same time, security and encryption are essential to reliable and compliant business operations. Avid fisherman Hoala Greevy, the Founder CEO of Paubox, brought his 18 years’ experience in the email industry to develop a seamless too to send encrypted messages to your doctor directly from your Gmail.
Cyber security is a red hot topic now, perhaps more than ever. What’s it like being a service provider in this industry?
It’s very dynamic space to be in, there’s always something new happening, like the recent WannaCry and Petya ransomware attacks. It’s especially true for email security as that’s usually the point of entry for a lot of these cyberattacks. We focus on trying to be proactive rather than just playing defense, which helps benefit our customers who don’t have to wait for patches, but can have a solution that helps mitigates the risk of breaches. In that way, it’s very rewarding to know that you can give customers peace of mind knowing that their email is secure.
You focus on seamless healthcare email encryption. How big of a market needs a solution like yours, and why?
It’s a huge market, and the needs actually extend beyond just traditional healthcare organizations and to the third-party services they use. Anyone who touches patient information needs to be sure their emails are encrypted for HIPAA compliance. We took a deep dive into the US Dept of Labor stats and if you look at just healthcare there’s about 18 million people, but including those who need to be HIPAA compliant, that number rises to 22 million.
Is all the debate around national healthcare strategy impacting your business?
Not at all, because the one thing everyone agrees on is that security for patient data is a priority. That’s a very non-partisan issue.
What’s it mean to the future of healthcare technology as a whole?
It’s really interesting to try and guess what will be the impact of policy to digital health. We held a fireside chat earlier in the year to discuss it and the one thing that everyone could agree on was that it creates opportunity.
It’s up to us as as entrepreneurs, startups, and tech companies to recognize the gaps in policy and real life that can be solved with the right solution. What are the pain points people are experiencing and how can we solve that and make their lives easier.
How has Paubox differentiated itself from competitors?
The biggest difference is how we focus on ease of use and building what our customers want. The result is our seamless email encryption solution that makes it simple to use for both senders and recipients.
Our approach makes it so users can send emails without having to take extra steps like login to a portal, type a keyword, or install another application. Recipients can also enjoy the same ease of use and view messages without having to also be Paubox customers, download an app, or use a portal.
We also include ransomware, phishing, malware and SPAM protection with inbound encryption.
Our product development process with our customers also led us to build our Email Data Loss Prevention Suite, which is exciting. Now customers can set rules to make sure emails with sensitive data don’t get sent by accident, and also inbound rules so only the right people are seeing sensitive data.
Where do you see yourselves and the industry in 3 years? 5 years?
We use a planning document that was pioneered by Salesforce called a V2MOM. Our vision is to become the market leader for HIPAA compliant email. We are laser focused on that goal.
As for the HIPAA industry, we believe it’s 10-15 years behind the curve. As such, significant opportunities will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.
About Hoala Greevy
As the architect of the Paubox platform, Greevy graduated from Portland State University with a BS in Geography and a BS in Social Sciences. He likes to go kayak fishing when possible and has caught two blue marlin from his kayak. They were 150 lbs and 168 lbs.
(Interview has been condensed and edited.)
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