Protecting healthcare data in the Cloud

Healthcare data is among the most sensitive and personal information that individuals entrust to healthcare providers. With the advent of cloud computing, it has become easier for healthcare organizations to store and manage their data in a more efficient manner

- Punam Shejale

As the global healthcare industry transitions to consumer-centric care delivery models, Cloud technologies and platforms are helping organizations adapt to the explosion of data from consumer devices, wearables, IOMT, and clinical trials. In recent years, there has been wholesome acceptance and adoption of hyper scalers like AWS, Azure, Salesforce, and Google Cloud.

The shift to Cloud technologies also significantly shifts in how patient data is stored and managed across distributed public cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid cloud environments. Some also offer healthcare-focused APIs to accelerate integration with enterprise healthcare applications and other sources of patient data. Given the shared responsibility operating model of Cloud Service Providers, migrating to the Cloud poses real challenges in terms of governance and in managing the risk triad of -cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, and consent management.

(i) Cybersecurity: There has been a sharp spike in cyber-attacks (malware, ransomware, data theft, DDoS attacks, etc.) in recent years. Public Cloud infrastructure, connecting to thousands of applications and loT devices, gives attackers multiple opportunities to penetrate, compared to on-premises systems behind a firewall. Cyber threats must be cohesively addressed across four key dimensions: