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Is it on your team's priority list to learn about strategies to safeguard user data and reduce risks to your organization without removing Google Analytics? If so, Coffey's solution, called server-side analytics, may be the answer.

Server-side analytics: How it works

Server-side analytics is a process for filtering data collected about visitors to a website before it flows to Google Analytics. Coffey offers this option to clients who partner with us for their website.

Server-side analytics uses a system called Google Tag Manager to add an additional layer to the data collection chain. This means it acts as a filter to remove sensitive data.

With a standard Google Analytics setup, data flows directly from the website to Google Analytics. With server-side analytics using Google Tag Manager:

• Data about a website visitor first passes through a Google Cloud server—the filter in this process.
• The Google Cloud server processes data to remove sensitive information, such as a website user's IP address.
• Data passes through the Google Cloud server but is not stored there.

Why might you want to remove a user's IP address before it flows to Google Analytics? Let's say someone visits a hospital's cancer services pages to look up treatment information for their tumor. Collecting and transmitting that person's IP address could be a disclosure of protected health information, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services bulletin for HIPAA-covered entities.

Bottom line: If you use Google Analytics on your website, server-side analytics may allow you to continue using this key marketing tool but with an eye toward HIPAA compliance and user privacy. And it does so in a cost-effective way.

Categories: HIPAA