While cloud solutions are transforming the medical industry, they bring new challenges. Chief among them is cloud security in healthcare. Hospitals deal with extremely sensitive data and copious regulations, making it a pressing concern. Thankfully, cloud computing offers plenty of ways to secure your environment.
Today, we will closely examine all the optimal ways to protect your information from prying eyes. Our guide will also address compliance, as well as help you find the best team for the job.
What is Cloud Security in Healthcare?
It’s a selection of processes and practices that a business must establish to protect its cloud storage and internal information. This array will vary for each institution, based on their own needs and existing infrastructure. However, what all healthcare cloud security has in common is its goal and some of the traditional ways to reach it.
While we’ll cover them in more detail below, it’s safe to say that things like encryption, access management, and security audits are essential. They unify cloud security in healthcare across the board and the specific issues it tackles.
Common Security Risks in Healthcare Cloud Computing
Healthcare cloud security risks are common across regions and institutions. There are four core points that everyone seeks to address, namely:
- Data breaches or leaks;
- Unauthorized access;
- System error or flaws;
- Compliance issues.
While they can have many variances and hospital-specific vectors, security practices tackle these specifically. They are the main pressing challenges to address, as an institution risks fines, privacy damage, and potential closure otherwise.
Data Breaches
Regardless of industry, it’s hard to understate how devastating a data breach can be. But it’s especially dangerous for a healthcare business. Millions of people are affected by just one, and such breaches are sadly all too common. This is why it’s vital to take cloud security in healthcare seriously, lest you want to risk huge fines and abusing the trust of millions of patients.
To be precise, breaches are only counted as such when they result from external attackers hacking your systems. They aren’t an outcome of the carelessness of dishonest employees but rather a consequence of poor protective measures. Thankfully, you can prevent them with a diligent approach to healthcare cloud security.
Unauthorized Access
Even without the threat of external attackers, protecting your systems from the inside is vital. Gating access to patient data, inventory information, and doctor management tools is paramount. It allows you to protect sensitive data, prevent embezzlement and fraud, and avoid any confusion.
Not all unauthorized access cases stem from malicious intent. Some doctors, especially ones unfamiliar with the tech, can accidentally gain entry into databases and panels not meant for them. Preventing this is a matter of tightening cloud security in healthcare and educating staff. It’s also important to do extensive QA on your systems to ensure unpredictable user behavior doesn’t lead to unauthorized access.
System Misconfiguration
Another aspect that highlights the importance of QA in cloud security in healthcare is the problems that a single error can cause. If you misconfigure your system, you risk disrupting schedules, losing access to vital info, or misassigning diagnoses. This is why working with a professional team on your cloud setup is critical.
Not verifying all of your setup is correct or leaving data without a backup is a dire mistake. It’s also one that is easy enough to remedy. By outsourcing the technical work and architecture to a reliable partner, you can get the system 100% right with NDAs protecting any confidential information.
Compliance and Regulatory Issues
The healthcare industry is subject to numerous regulations, changing based on region and the subfield. As is often the case, navigating these bureaucratic matters can be tricky, especially when technology comes into play. It’s sometimes best to request a legal consultation to make sure your system is fully compliant with any relevant regulations.
Ideally, of course, your engineering team would handle a lot of this, as they will hopefully be fully familiar with the legal requirements. That’s where experience displays its real value, as a veteran team will know all the small things that matter for compliance. Not to mention, of course, the actual skill at crafting good solutions.
Top 5 Cloud Security Practices in Healthcare
Now that we’ve discussed the risks, let’s talk about mitigating them and reinforcing healthcare cloud security. These are essential steps for any medical business that wants to adopt cloud computing for its own benefit.
Comprehend the Regulatory Landscape
As we’ve pointed out earlier, regulations and dealing with them are a major part of any medical institution’s work. While you can get help with these through legal consultations and your engineering team, there’s no avoiding the importance of local regulations and how they affect your system.
Consider if navigating around them will result in excessive costs or compromises to the system that would negate its intended effects. Sometimes, it makes sense to cut a feature or two to preserve the rest intact. On the bright side, understanding why regulations limit certain things can help you comprehend cloud security in healthcare on a deeper level.
Implement Data Encryption, Monitoring, and Backup Strategies
This practice fully depends on your tech team, which is another reason outsourcing to professionals makes sense. They can provide encryption for all of your data, both at rest and in transit, which is essential to prevent breaches. Similarly, monitoring tools are great for keeping tabs on data movement and tracking who accessed it, which warns you of unauthorized access.
Lastly, the tech team should implement a stable backup system that covers all data and ensures that nothing gets lost in case of technical failure. Too many companies ignore this point, thinking that the cloud’s reliability removes the need for backups. That is not at all the case, as preparing for contingency scenarios is important and guarantees you won’t be caught unaware.
Develop a Comprehensive Identity and Access Management (IAM) Strategy
A smart IAM approach is the easiest way to avoid unauthorized access to patient data or hospital management panels. Create layered identities, accounting for the fact that a doctor may have high-tier access in one department but should not have any access to another one’s files. Build in roles that you can adjust to open certain databases or close them on the fly.
Similarly, establish an easy way to revoke access or grant it temporarily, allowing doctors to take over others’ patients and duties. This helps keep the workflow smooth while aligning with healthcare cloud security policies and practices.
Utilize Regular Audits
Your system may look bulletproof from the inside. After all, you’re the one in charge, and you’ve thought of everything and followed the instructions to a T. However, an external look is vital to spotting problems that you simply may not have considered. Requesting outside audits to verify your system’s integrity and your cloud security in healthcare is important.
These audits will test your system unexpectedly and help uncover its flaws and potential problems. Spotting them early could potentially prevent major security issues or even a full-on breach. In this case, it makes sense to invest in scheduled audits that stress-test your IAM strategy, your encryption, or even just your employees. This way, you can guarantee you’re ready for the real deal.
Conduct Continuous Staff Training
No amount of security measures that prevent leaks and breaches will be sufficient, if your employees don’t know security requirements. One staff member who erroneously gives access to the wrong person is enough to compromise the entire system. Thus, education is key if you want your healthcare cloud security to be truly airtight.
Of course, onboarding is the most lengthy part of this, as you have to introduce staffers to a whole new solution. However, it doesn’t end there, as your team will need to keep abreast of any new features or changes you implement. As technology moves on, you will update your system, and these updates must be communicated to everybody who uses your cloud solution.
Need Help with Cloud Security in Healthcare Products?
We’ve shown you the problems that exist in cloud security in healthcare and explained how to tackle them in a structured way. Following these should leave you with an airtight system that provides patients the best hospital management and care. However, building such a system is a technical challenge that requires years of experience.
Thankfully, you’re already here with JetBase, a company with more than a decade of technical know-how. We’ve made mobile apps with medical IoT integrations, telemedicine solutions, and specialized cybersecurity software. Our expertise in healthcare cloud security is unmatched, and you can verify that for yourself. Simply message us, and let’s start your project together.
