Regional Health System

The Challenge

A regional health system with 15 hospitals and 2,000 staff needed to migrate from aging Exchange 2016 servers to Google Workspace. The migration involved email containing protected health information (PHI), making HIPAA compliance non-negotiable.

Previous migration vendors required data to pass through their cloud servers — a compliance red flag that the health system's CISO rejected. They needed a solution where patient data never left the hospital network.

Requirements:

• HIPAA compliance — PHI must never leave the network perimeter
• Migrate email, calendar, contacts, shared mailboxes, and mailbox rules
• Maintain original email dates and folder structures
• Complete during summer (lowest patient volume)
• Provide audit trail for compliance verification

The Solution

MigrateData's on-prem agent and zero-retention architecture provided the compliance guarantees the health system needed.

On-Prem Agent Deployment

The IT team deployed MigrateData's on-prem agent inside their existing infrastructure:

• Agent ran inside the hospital's network perimeter
• Data flowed directly from Exchange to Google Workspace
• Only metadata (item counts, status, timestamps) reached the cloud dashboard
• All local data encrypted with AES-256-GCM
• HMAC-SHA256 message signing for all cloud communication

Migration Strategy

Using MigrateData's phased rollout approach:

• Phase 1: IT department (50 users) — validation
• Phase 2: Administrative staff (500 users)
• Phase 3: Clinical staff (1,000 users)
• Phase 4: Physicians (450 users) — scheduled during shift changes

OU placement organized users into the correct Google Workspace organizational units: /Hospitals/{Location}/{Department}.

Compliance Features Used

• Immutable audit logs — every migration action recorded
• Per-tenant encryption — OAuth tokens encrypted with hospital's unique key
• Role-based access — only authorized IT staff could access migration dashboard
• Compliance exports — PDF reports for HIPAA audit documentation

The Results

• 2,000 users migrated over 4 weeks
• Zero PHI exposure — data never left hospital network
• HIPAA audit passed — immutable audit logs satisfied compliance team
• 99.8% success rate — 12 items required manual re-migration
• Mailbox rules preserved — Exchange inbox rules converted to Gmail filters