Security in Data Migration, and When Not to Migrate
- Posted by Alexander Craddock
- On August 17, 2017
- automation, business process automation, cloud-based, compliance, data exchange, document exchange, health it, integration, interoperability, regulation, security, technology
There’s no turning back on the cloud computing revolution. By 2020, more than 90 percent of data center traffic will be cloud traffic, according to Cisco’s Global Cloud Index forecast.
Separate analysis from 451 Research finds enterprise spending on hosting and cloud services up by 26 percent in 2017 over 2016, outpacing a 12 percent increase in total IT budgets during the same span. “Hosting and cloud services are becoming a focus of IT investment, via both new projects and the migration of existing workloads,” observes Liam Eagle, research manager at the firm.
In healthcare, 76 percent of new or existing workloads are moving to the cloud, in areas such as data archiving, backups/disaster recovery, back-office applications and server virtualization.
Some might even say the transition to cloud is happening too quickly. In fact, the simplicity of initiating cloud projects has raised eyebrows among industry observers — especially since protected health information (PHI) is at stake. “The ease of spinning up a cloud application can create, in and of itself, a risk,” says Shane Whitlatch, enterprise vice president at data security firm FairWarning. “Because cloud projects are easy to start, it’s also easy to just leave them there and not monitor them.”
Does he have a point?
Setting the record straight
Without a doubt, companies across all industries have made some missteps in migrating data to the cloud. In certain cases, organizations have viewed data migration as a one-time event rather a process that will likely be repeated over the years. Therefore, it’s important to analyze whether an IT infrastructure can hold up to the demands of a full-scale migration, reports HealthITInfrastructure.
Closer to home in healthcare, organizations often fail to assess data-quality issues before embarking on a migration. This might come into play, for example, when moving data from a legacy electronic health record (EHR) system to a new EHR application.
And while it’s certainly possible for a healthcare provider to fall victim to the scenario Whitlatch envisions (e.g., gathering PHI for research purposes and later abandoning that data outside established controls on a cloud-based platform), most organizations would avoid that type of vulnerability through due diligence. They recognize that cybersecurity is a shared responsibility between cloud provider and customer. HIPAA’s Security Rule, for instance, applies in equal force to data protection whether the data resides in on-premise systems or in the cloud.
Additionally, above all other factors, healthcare organizations are concerned about adherence to regulatory requirements such as HIPAA when selecting a cloud services provider, according to a 2016 study conducted by HIMSS Analytics.
NetDirector’s HealthData Exchange, a cloud-based platform for exchanging data between healthcare entities, has been certified as HIPAA-compliant under audit by a third-party security and compliance solutions provider. This certification “strengthens the trust that our clients place in us to safely integrate their platforms and transform their data,” explains NetDirector CEO Harry Beisswenger.
For more information on the HealthData Exchange platform, please contact us or request a free demo.