As more and more healthcare organizations are embracing cloud to reap in benefits, storing sensitive data on those platforms is also becoming a bit of concern to many. Although, the HIPAA has established certain standards to protect Personal Health Information (PHI) on cloud platforms not many seem to be taking them seriously.
So, as the threats in the cyber landscape are evolving; merely being compliant with HIPAA is no longer enough as digital leaders should take proactive measures to protect themselves from different threats.
Cybersecurity Insiders brings to you some valuable tips to have security well established on the cloud platforms in order to protect the most valuable information from reaching the hands of hackers.
Have your security monitored continuously- Adopting a comprehensive always-monitoring strategy for cloud platforms helps in flagging suspicious user logins and can help in capturing key file changes and configurations in time. Therefore, this move can help mitigate potential threats in time avoiding their infiltration into key personal health information systems.
Secure your software- As nowadays most of the software development teams are relying on 3rd party tools to build, test and deploy their applications, such tools can smartly attract the attention of hackers as they can contain super-sensitive info such as API keys, database passwords, TLS certificates, and much more. So, to those who are building the software, you better architect the solution in such a way that monitoring of those environments can be done not only at the production stage, but can also be carried out at test and development stage.
Auditing- Conducting security audits at regular intervals can help find answers such as who, what, where, when and how the hackers entered your network which makes it easy for admins to secure the environment in a better way to prevent data breaches and thefts.
Compliance in expanding cloud environments- It is not that easy to maintain the standards related to compliance in expanding cloud environments. So, organizations must ensure that the companies offering cloud services are offering internal controls and processes in a developed way followed by visibility on who is accessing and sharing files with whom, where and how.
Automate scaling in a secure way- With healthcare companies willing to take the advantage of cloud benefits such as reliability, cost-effectiveness, and scalability; they should assure that an automated cloud security monitoring solution is also in place to keep a tab on all the developments to help have continuous visibility across dynamic environments.
