Electronic Health Reporter

Paubox is a San Francisco-based startup that focuses on making HIPAA-compliant email easy to accomplish for the healthcare industry. Rather than making encryption cumbersome for the user, Paubox makes it easy without adding additional steps. This makes adoption and deployment of Paubox easy for any size organization, from the single doctor private practice to the largest hospital.

Elevator pitch

Paubox is the easiest way to send and receive secure, HIPAA-compliant email. There are no portals to login to, no software or apps to install, no extra steps for senders or recipients. Users can just write and send email as normal from any device and Paubox will do the rest to deliver encrypted email straight to the recipient’s inbox.

Product/service description

Paubox encrypted email is the easiest to use HIPAA-compliant email solution for the healthcare industry. Using military grade encryption, Paubox focuses on the user first, allowing for seamless inbox-to-inbox email delivery without any extra steps.

Rather than limiting seamless delivery to a closed network, or requiring a button press or to enable secure email, Paubox allows users to just write and send email as normal from any device. Recipients will get encrypted email straight to their inbox without needing to login to portals or download and open an app.

Because of its ease of use, Paubox can deploy within hours for any size organization.

Customers can host their email with Paubox, or keep their existing email address. Paubox integrates with all major commercial email platforms like Outlook, Office 365 and Google Apps.

In addition, Paubox encrypted email includes inbound encryption and protection against ransomware, malware, virus, SPAM and phishing attacks. This extra security is especially important since many data breaches occur from malicious inbound email.

Paubox also offers an Encrypted Email API that allows organizations and developers to integrate seamless email encryption with their apps, patient portals and EHR management software.

Founder’s story

Like all great companies, Paubox was founded to solve the needs of its customers.

Founder and CEO Hoala Greevy has moe than 18 years of experience in email security. After beginning his career at Critical Path, he founded Hawaii’s first email security company in 2003 called Pau Spam, which has since filtered more than one billion messages.

In 2014, when speaking to one of his Pau Spam customers, Make-A-Wish Foundation of Hawaii, Greevy discovered a need for easy to use encryption solutions that could meet industry regulations. There was no solution in the marketplace that was affordable, secure, and easy to use. From those initial discussions, Greevy founded Paubox and continues to develop features and products to fit the market’s needs.

Marketing/promotion strategy

Paubox offers its solutions both direct and through a network of trusted IT partners. Pricing is annual with discounts available for larger customers. In addition to encrypted email, Paubox also offers complimentary products that customers can select, including encrypted online forms, online storage and encrypted email API.

Market opportunity

Cyberattacks on healthcare organizations are increasing year over year. According to HIPAA Journal, through June 2016 a record number of healthcare records were exposed, with more that 11 million; 142 breaches were reported, compared to 143 breaches in all of 2015. Many of these breaches were successful because of holes in email security.

The reason for the focus of hackers on the healthcare industry is because the vertical is behind in terms of technology adoption and IT infrastructure. Keeping up with government initiatives for things like interoperability adds to the issue. This is exacerbated for small healthcare providers who do not have the resources to dedicate staff and budget to cybersecurity.

In total, there are approximately 36 million employees working in the United States healthcare industry. There are approximately 1.72 million organizations. Each of these organizations need to follow HIPAA regulations to protect any private health information (PHI) they send in email. This means they require technical safeguards like encryption, along with physical and administrative safeguards.

According to a report from Grand View Research, the global healthcare IT market will reach $104.5 billion by 2020. North America accounted for approximately 45.5 percent of the global market as of 2014.

How your company differentiates itself from the competition?

Paubox is the only email encryption solution that does not require users to download software, install apps, press buttons, enter keywords, login to portals or limit seamless inbox-to-inbox delivery to a closed network.

With a strong focus on the user experience, Paubox lets users send email as normal without worrying about extra steps. Unlike other providers, Paubox doesn’t ignore recipients who also enjoy a better experience, without bulky apps or internet portals to worry about. This is especially important for recipients who view email on their mobile device.

As a result, Paubox can secure an entire organization’s email which limits the security risk of leaving some accounts unprotected.

Paubox also includes inbound encryption with ransomware, malware, virus, vi and phishing protection.

Business model

Paubox is a SaaS company and uses an annual subscription model and charges per mailbox. A free trial is available for all services and a business associate agreement is provided with paid accounts.

Current needs

Paubox is growing quickly with 24 percent month-over-month growth in 2016 and is looking to accelerate that growth after being accepted into Batch 18 of 500 startups, a top-tier global venture capital seed fund and startup accelerator.

To fuel that growth, Paubox is currently looking to hire for engineering, customer success and sales.

When founded

Paubox was founded in October 2014 and launched its first email encryption product in January 2015.

Number of full-time employees: 5

Headquarters: San Francisco