Cloud Security in Healthcare: Staying on the Safe Side

Cloud computing presents medical providers with numerous benefits. First, it allows for convenient data storage and sharing. Second, it makes medical research faster with 24/7 access to the required information. Finally, it stimulates the development of AI tools in healthcare internal systems. At the same time, progressive solutions demand reliable security measures to protect sensitive medical information. According to the statistics, revenue in the cloud security in healthcare market will reach $2.05 billion in 2024.

As an expert in HealthTech, I have been dealing with businesses in the medical domain for 20 years already. In this post, I share my insights on a cloud security strategy to safeguard healthcare data.

What is cloud security in healthcare?

Cloud security in healthcare includes protecting patient data, such as their health histories, medical records, insurance claims, and transactions. Leakages of that information might lead to breaches of confidentiality and reputational losses for patients and medical providers. Throughout 2020 – 2023, US healthcare remained the most vulnerable industry to cyber attacks. We, as software developers, can improve the situation by helping companies that seek technological assistance.

Cloud security comes as an obligatory side task for IT developers. For instance, the experts of the Belitsoft company assisted a US healthcare technology firm in .NET Framework to .NET Core migration. The transition to a cross-platform cloud solution includes security measures and compliance analytics implementation. As a result, the client received a secure cross-platform cloud solution and managed to increase their target customer base as their main aim.

Apart from traditional methods of combating cyber threats, I see a huge potential in the application of artificial intelligence (AI). Thus, AI enhances managed detection and response systems (MDR) and creates strong passwords. AI hinders the most common attacks, including malware, zero-day exploits, phishing, and others.

What are the main trouble of cloud security in healthcare?

Healthcare providers use cloud computing in their systems as it offers easy access to patients’ data from any location. Besides that, doctors can address their colleagues remotely and share materials for research. At the same time, it is important to protect any access to ensure medical data safety. 

As mentioned in the research carried out by medical schools and health information technology departments, the main security troubles of cloud solutions are data security, availability and integrity, information confidentiality, and network security.

The above survey determines that maintaining data security is the most crucial challenge. By data security, availability, and integrity, we mean that there should be authorized access to information, and all stakeholders should understand the necessity and consistently use data security measures. 

Identity fraud, phishing, and ransomware are currently among the most popular cyber attacks. In May 2024, two healthcare organizations in Europe and the USA suffered from the notorious ransomware group Black Basta. The criminals encrypted patient data and threatened to leak it to the Internet. They demanded money for decryption codes. The group has existed since 2022 and has presumably earned over $100 million using the same scheme. 

One more topical security issue within cloud-based systems is protecting hybrid and multicloud platforms. Medical organizations sometimes opt for solutions partially located both on the cloud and on-premises, which is called a hybrid system. Large medical enterprises may use multiple clouds to store their data. Such systems are vulnerable to attacks, if there is a break in the cloud, it will affect other related environments. Therefore, proper settings and identity management measures are required.

Speaking about the reasons behind any cloud security in healthcare, I would mention the following:

• negligent attitude toward data access and sharing;
• absence of accurate data encryption;
• insufficient network environment control;
• unprotected APIs.

Combating security threats

Solutions to security challenges are growing logically from their causes. To protect sensitive medical data, software developers supplement their cloud-based solutions with the following measures:

• Strict authentication. A zero-trust strategy serves best here. It means any user, be it an internal employee or an external contractor, should be authorized and validated before being granted access. Trust no one. Zero trust includes various access rights depending on the position of an employee and the data they need for their work. For instance, medical billers do not need details about a patient’s health history, so this information is unavailable.
• Network segmentation. It divides the network into smaller segments with separate defense methods each. In combination with access rights, network segmentation does not allow unauthorized persons inside the system.
• Behavior monitoring. Endpoint detection and response (EDR) technology examines typical user behavior on the platform and informs security experts of any suspicious activity. For instance, somebody may perform unusual or repetitive commands, and the defense mechanism will determine it as a security threat and block it.
• Security information and event management (SIEM). This is a technology that comprises separate security tools and the work of the whole security department. It allows experts to see the authorization attempt with a particular user ID from a certain device at some endpoint as a single event, not three separate ones. As a result, security experts see the general picture and react instantly. It shortens the time for the criminals to perform their attacks.
• Penetration testing. IT experts attempt to hack their own systems to identify susceptible places. Software development engineers analyze computer systems, networks, and applications and imitate cyber attacks. It allows technical specialists to find security drawbacks and fix them, therefore decreasing the chances of a damaging cyber attack.
• Data classification. It is creating categories of data depending on its importance and delicacy. More secret data requires more sophisticated protection. Such an approach allows for smart resource and effort allocation.

Final thoughts

Building proper security systems is hard. However, the advantages of cloud security in healthcare force companies to invest in data protection and network resilience. Reliable software partners are able to build up a detailed strategy for the cloud computing transition, anticipating strong security measures. Therefore, medical providers can feel secure and focus on delivering high-quality treatment to their customers. The best system is one where every participant, i.e., healthtech firm, medical provider, and IT department, knows their role and has enough competence to perform it. 

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