The Internet, now enabled with high performance, high reliability and low-cost connectivity, is enabling the transformation of every aspect of the human experience, and it has redefined how entire industries operate.
Personal and professional relationships are easy to establish and maintain. Market access and scalable service capabilities have never been so easy to achieve. And traditional barriers of space, time and capital have practically disappeared around the world.
With Internet and cloud-based technology, doctors are virtually diagnosing
The Internet is omni-present in today’s society, but that doesn’t come without challenges.
Staying On Guard
The cyber world is structurally and pragmatically governed by infrastructure providers to enable interoperability, communication and connectivity. Geopolitical entities (governments) struggle for relevance and control in the virtual world, and, for the most part, they haven’t made much of a dent in mitigating cyber attacks.
We are all very much on our own in this ungovernable world. All individuals and organizations must look to their own safety, security and privacy protection. Care must be taken to understand the inherent risks of leveraging convenient connectivity and access before exposing high-value or regulated content through Internet services.
Also, the nature of threats is constantly evolving. In the early days, threats were more about hobbyists or small groups creating pranks, viruses, “denial of service” attacks or network access hacks to disrupt a service. Today, these sort of threats continue, but they are overshadowed by better funded, systematic criminal networks. Activity is focused on identity theft for various fraud schemes, scams and intellectual property pirating—it is the real threat to the virtual world.
Everyone is “hackable”—no one is safe or secure. We all must invest and engage in self-defense, no one will do it for us. Four key strategies include:
Additionally, be technically ready. Build capable internal teams that are ready to respond to an attack at a moment’s notice, and ensure you have ready access to highly credible outside help.
Staying cyber secure is complex and expensive. While every company should have some internal knowledge to evaluate and govern cyber threats, cloud-based infrastructure providers are increasingly available and adept at serving many cyber threat management needs.
Strong security and privacy measures are not just another “added, billable service” that can enhance revenues for a cloud provider. Every cloud provider must be able to demonstrate strict controls if they are to earn the business of a sophisticated buyer. Corporate data integrity, privacy and security are critical entry requirements for any move to host services off-premises and must be a priority.
When you focus cyber security through the lens of healthcare IT, issues only become more complex. I’ll be diving deeper into the layers of healthcare cloud security on March 2 at HIMSS 2016. For more information about the session, click here.
Gary Seay is Principal of BrightWork Advisory, LLC, a practice focused on enabling
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