HIPAA and Google Cloud Print

[Edgar Sanchez]

Is it possible to get a signed BAA for HIPAA compliance for Google Cloud Print.  I'm getting a mix of information on the web.  It would be nice if there was a place to ask Google developer related legal questions.

[Jacob Marble]

Hi Edgar, let me ask around.

[Edgar Sanchez]

Thanks for looking into it.  The purpose is to be able to provide health care with the ability to print to their local (secured) printers from our cloud services.  

[C. Andrew Warren]

We may be able to support this once GCP is on Weave; today GCP isn't onboarded for the HIPAA compliance infrastructure or auditing.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Cloud Print Developers" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to gcp-developer...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/gcp-developers.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gcp-developers/3c66f6b4-e54c-4848-9767-d3f706ea0ff2%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Edgar Sanchez]

Thanks for the info.  Is there a place to go for these types of legal product questions... for future reference?

[Jacob Marble]

Edgar, two thoughts (I'm a software engineer, not a lawyer, not familiar with HIPAA):

- some information about HIPAA

- If your users need to print from ChromeOS or the Chrome browser *only* then you might consider the CUPS Connector which has a "local only" mode, meaning that the ChromeOS device talks directly to the print server, without talking to Google's cloud service.

Jacob

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gcp-developers/d34289c2-8e64-46b3-b68a-0ee7de405ad6%40googlegroups.com.

[Edgar Sanchez]

Hi Jacob,

The general idea for what we are doing is as follows:

The user connects to our RDP session then through our application hosted on Azure VM the user selects print for one of our print supporting regions and prints to the hospital/clinic printer.  

If the print data didn't get stored in the middle but instead the printer directly received the print job perhaps this could work.

Is this what the CUPS connector could do?

[Jacob Marble]

The CUPS Connector makes CUPS printers (printers installed on a Linux/Unix/OS X server/workstation) available to Google Cloud Print clients, like ChromeOS.

The CUPS Connector has two modes, it runs in one or both:

- cloud: (1) the client gives a new print job to Google's servers via the Internet, then (2) Google's servers give the job to the CUPS Connector via the Internet, then (3) the CUPS Connector gives the job to a CUPS server (usually localhost:631)

- local: (1) the client gives a new print job to the CUPS Connector via the local subnet, then (2) see (3) above

Local mode is also called GCP 2.0, or Privet in the developer docs. You can learn the technical details here:

https://developers.google.com/cloud-print/docs/privet

A printer that supports Privet *can* depend on Google's servers, via the Internet, for adjustments like format conversion and scaling, if the printer has too little resources.

The CUPS Connector *never* contacts Google's servers in local mode. Since the CUPS Connector depends on CUPS, all scaling and format conversion can be handled within CUPS. This has three benefits: (1) privacy-sensitive customers like yourself, (2) performance can be improved, or at least better controlled, (3) flakey/slow/third-world Internet connections don't affect printing.

Jacob

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gcp-developers/b08f6d6d-f987-4948-af25-9327d4d4b879%40googlegroups.com.

[morris sanford]

Has there been any progress towards HIPAA compliance?  

On Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 4:47:52 PM UTC-5, C. Andrew Warren wrote: