Enable HIPAA compliance
This page describes how to enable HIPAA compliance for Lakebase projects. HIPAA compliance applies to workspaces that use the compliance security profile with the HIPAA standard, and it enforces extended audit logging for your databases.
Prerequisites
- A workspace configured at the workspace level with the compliance security profile and the HIPAA compliance standard. For the enablement steps, see Enable HIPAA compliance controls.
- Lakebase projects running Postgres 16, 17, or 18.
Enable HIPAA for a workspace
Enablement is automatic. When a workspace uses the compliance security profile with the HIPAA standard, Lakebase enforces HIPAA controls, including extended audit logging, for projects in that workspace. You do not take a separate action in the Lakebase UI, API, or CLI to turn on HIPAA audit logging.
Restart existing projects
If you enable HIPAA on a workspace that already has running Lakebase projects, those projects must restart before they enforce HIPAA audit logging. Databricks does not automatically restart running instances for you.
To apply HIPAA audit logging to an existing project, restart its compute. Until the compute restarts, the project continues to run without the HIPAA audit configuration.
New projects created in a HIPAA-enabled workspace enforce HIPAA audit logging from the start. Only projects that were already running when HIPAA was enabled require a restart.
Verify audit logging
After you enable HIPAA and restart affected projects, confirm that audit events are being delivered. See Query audit logs.
Next steps
- HIPAA audit logging: Understand what Lakebase logs, how to query it, and the record fields. See HIPAA audit logging.
- HIPAA compliance: Supported standards and shared responsibility. See HIPAA compliance for Lakebase.