MangoApps Achieves HITRUST Certification

MangoApps became the first modern digital workplace platform to achieve HITRUST Risk-based, 2-year (r2) Certification — a milestone that took two years to complete and positions the platform as a validated option for regulated industries where data security requirements are not negotiable.

The announcement, made September 6th, 2022, reflects a deliberate decision to pursue the most rigorous independent security validation available to enterprise software vendors, rather than self-attesting compliance or accumulating individual audits across multiple frameworks.

What HITRUST certification actually means

The Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) was founded in 2007 to solve a specific problem: organizations in healthcare and other regulated industries were conducting independent security assessments of every vendor they worked with, and vendors were undergoing dozens of overlapping audits to satisfy different customers' requirements. The result was redundancy on both sides — buyers repeating work, vendors proving the same facts in different formats.

HITRUST addressed this by creating a unified assurance program that incorporates federal and state regulations, industry standards, and multiple security frameworks under a single certification. A vendor that achieves HITRUST certification has, in a single process, demonstrated compliance with requirements that would otherwise require separate assessments for HIPAA, HITECH, NIST, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS, among others.

The Risk-based, 2-year (r2) certification — the tier MangoApps achieved — is the most rigorous level in the HITRUST program. It requires both automated quality assurance checks and manual review by HITRUST assessors. The "2-year" designation means the certification covers a validated, two-year window of compliance evidence, not a point-in-time snapshot. Maintaining r2 status requires ongoing compliance activity and re-certification, which means the certification remains a live signal rather than a historical artifact.

"The HITRUST Assurance Program is the most rigorous available, consisting of a multitude of quality assurance checks, both automated and manual," said Bimal Sheth, Executive Vice President, Standards Development and Assurance Operations at HITRUST. "The fact that MangoApps has achieved HITRUST Risk-based, 2-year Certification attests to the high quality of their information risk management and compliance program."

Why regulated industries require HITRUST as a procurement filter

Healthcare organizations, financial services firms, and government agencies face a recurring challenge when evaluating enterprise software: the vendor landscape does not converge on a single compliance standard. Some vendors hold SOC 2 Type II; others hold ISO 27001; others self-attest to HIPAA compliance without independent validation. Each represents a different assurance model, and none maps directly to the others.

Procurement teams in regulated industries resolve this by adding HITRUST to their vendor qualification criteria. Because HITRUST incorporates the requirements of HIPAA, HITECH, and NIST, a vendor with HITRUST r2 certification provides evidence of compliance across all of those frameworks simultaneously — without requiring the buyer to conduct parallel assessments.

For healthcare organizations specifically, HIPAA compliance is a legal requirement, not a preference. The HITRUST program converts HIPAA compliance from a claim vendors can self-report into a certification that independent assessors have validated. This distinction matters when protected health information (PHI) flows through a platform — which it does any time clinical staff use a digital workplace tool for scheduling, internal messaging, or document access.

MangoApps entering healthcare deployments with HITRUST r2 certification means healthcare customers can treat the security review as resolved, rather than opening new vendor assessment cycles at each contract renewal.

How HITRUST r2 compares to SOC 2 and ISO 27001

SOC 2 Type II is the most common security certification in the enterprise software market. It covers security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy controls, and requires an independent auditor to test those controls over an observation period of at least six months. SOC 2 is a meaningful baseline, and MangoApps holds it.

The difference between SOC 2 and HITRUST r2 is primarily scope and regulatory mapping. SOC 2 is designed to be general-purpose — it assures buyers that a vendor's controls are in place, but it does not directly map to healthcare-specific regulations or to the full NIST cybersecurity framework. HITRUST r2 is explicitly mapped to HIPAA, HITECH, PCI DSS, NIST, and ISO 27001, which means a single HITRUST r2 certificate addresses requirements that would otherwise require four or five separate audits.

ISO 27001 is the international information security management standard. It covers a vendor's information security management system (ISMS) and is widely recognized in global enterprise procurement. MangoApps also holds ISO 27001 certification. ISO 27001 and HITRUST are complementary rather than redundant — ISO 27001 demonstrates that the organization has a governed security management program; HITRUST demonstrates that the program meets U.S. healthcare regulatory requirements specifically.

Holding SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HITRUST r2 simultaneously means MangoApps customers in regulated industries can satisfy security requirements across general enterprise, global operations, and healthcare-specific compliance in a single vendor relationship.

What this means for MangoApps customers in healthcare

For healthcare customers, the certification has direct operational consequences. When a health system or hospital network evaluates a digital workplace platform, HIPAA Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) are standard vendor requirements. The vendor must demonstrate not just a willingness to sign a BAA but the underlying compliance infrastructure that makes the BAA meaningful.

HITRUST r2 certification provides that infrastructure evidence in the form most healthcare procurement and compliance teams recognize. Rather than submitting to a custom security assessment that may take months, MangoApps customers in healthcare can reference the certification as the validated basis for their own vendor approval process.

"We are excited to finally complete the HITRUST certification process, which has been two years in the making," said Anup Kejriwal, CEO of MangoApps. "This external validation of our extreme focus on our customers' data security positions MangoApps as one of the top software vendors for regulated industries like Healthcare."

The two-year timeline referenced in the CEO's statement reflects the preparation required before MangoApps could even submit for the r2 assessment. Achieving HITRUST r2 is not a documentation exercise — it requires implementing specific controls, maintaining them over time, and submitting to independent assessment of both their design and their operational effectiveness.

For customers outside healthcare, the certification signals the same thing: MangoApps operates a security program designed to satisfy the most demanding compliance requirements in the market. Organizations in financial services, government, and other regulated sectors that have not yet adopted HITRUST as a procurement criterion are increasingly likely to do so, given the regulatory environment's trajectory. Holding r2 certification now means MangoApps is positioned for those requirements before customers encounter them.

How to verify MangoApps' HITRUST certification status

HITRUST maintains a public registry of certified organizations through the HITRUST MyCSF portal. Any organization can search that registry to confirm a vendor's current certification status, the scope of the assessment, and the certification's expiration date.

The r2 certification covers a two-year window and requires ongoing maintenance activity to remain valid. Customers with compliance teams should verify the certification's current standing through the HITRUST registry at each contract renewal, rather than relying on a static documentation file. Active certifications in the HITRUST registry reflect the current state of the program; an expired certification in a vendor's security documentation does not.

MangoApps' security documentation provides current certification status and the scope of the HITRUST r2 assessment. Compliance officers conducting vendor reviews can request the letter of certification and the HITRUST assurance report directly from the MangoApps security team.

What the certification covers — and what it doesn't

HITRUST r2 certification covers the MangoApps platform — the core digital workplace application, including communication, content, and collaboration functionality. The certification applies to MangoApps' handling of data within the platform's infrastructure, including the controls governing access, encryption, incident response, and data retention.

The certification does not substitute for a customer's own HIPAA compliance program. HITRUST certification addresses the vendor's side of the business associate relationship — it validates that MangoApps has the controls in place to handle PHI in a compliant manner. It does not extend to a customer's internal policies, training, or use of the platform. Health systems implementing MangoApps still need to configure the platform according to their own information governance policies and ensure that their employees receive appropriate HIPAA training for the specific use cases they deploy.

This is the standard operating model for HITRUST-certified software vendors and is consistent with how HIPAA allocates responsibility between covered entities and their business associates.

What the certification stack means for procurement decisions

HITRUST r2 is the current capstone of MangoApps' security certification stack, which also includes SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001. Together, these certifications reflect a security program designed to satisfy requirements across multiple regulatory contexts rather than any single standard.

For procurement teams comparing enterprise digital workplace platforms, the combination of SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HITRUST r2 is operationally significant: it eliminates the need for separate security assessments in most enterprise and regulated-industry contexts. Regulated-industry buyers who require HITRUST as a condition of vendor approval can proceed with MangoApps without commissioning a separate assessment process. Buyers who require SOC 2 for general enterprise security baseline, or ISO 27001 for global operations, are covered by the same certification stack.

The two-year timeline to achieve HITRUST r2 certification — from program preparation through assessment to certification — reflects the depth of the underlying work. HITRUST r2 is designed to be difficult to achieve precisely because it is designed to be meaningful when achieved. For organizations that need to know their digital workplace platform meets the highest standard of independent security validation, HITRUST r2 certification is that standard.