The Healthcare System Settles In with the Cloud

Organizations have upped their games by strengthening their technical infrastructure and jumping through the regulatory hoops in the healthcare industry. The service providers have taken notice of the shift and are embracing the cloud in big innovative ways.

FREMONT, CA: Lately, most IT and security professionals began with the very idea of keeping mission-critical data, especially protected health information with the help of in the public cloud. Cost savings and lively remote hosting can offer the risks of entrusting such precious data to a third-party were too significant to breeze past.

When the cloud technology was still in its infancy, many industries, including healthcare, were trying to hold on to the cloud demands and the probable risks associated with the technology. The lack of transparency and standards were of primary concern along with the issues of privacy, security, and overall compliance.

The chief cloud providers having the most probability of meeting sound security requirements were not in favor to sign any business agreements. The very disapproval resulted as a deal-breaker for the healthcare industry. Furthermore, for security capabilities, the public cloud often lacked maturity and sophistication. Therefore, several investments and controls related to the security of information systems and data were unavailable and were unsuccessful in replicating in cloud environments.

The potential security considerations necessarily intended on having to take care of two disparate sets of controls, one in the cloud and the other on-premise. The proposal did not make any sense from a financial and supportability perspective.

Recently, the chief concerns have been alleviated as the CIOs, CISOs, and other infosec leaders became comfortable with the cloud, and the rest embraced it as a means of data hosting.

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Cloud migration is considered a valuable opportunity to enhance the security posture of a health system in general. The transition or the move to the cloud is a significant aspect of truly securing the system as a considerable amount of healthcare has been inherited with rapid growth.

The demands of the cloud have immensely helped to ensure more cohesive thinking about company-wide security. Healthcare enterprises should implement better configuration standards, advanced framework standards, and later, the exceptions that need to be added and document all of them up-front. The most satisfying thing is that the security tools in healthcare have developed to a point where enabling a shift in this perspective is achievable-ready.