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This post is part of a series from AWS thought leaders in healthcare, life sciences, and genomics, examining the influence of technological advancements and cloud computing in their fields.
With the conference season back in full swing, it’s refreshing to engage with peers face-to-face after over two years of virtual gatherings due to the pandemic. Reflecting on the meetings, discussions, and the inspiring individuals I encountered, one theme consistently emerged: the desire for a shift towards personalized healthcare. This approach promises not only improved patient outcomes but also cost-efficiency. As leaders in healthcare, our shared goal is to foster better outcomes, equitable access to services, and ultimately, healthier communities.
However, before organizations can embrace personalized healthcare, they must prioritize personal data protection—specifically, sensitive healthcare information such as clinical notes, payment details, medical images, and test results. It’s crucial for healthcare organizations to not only safeguard this data but also ensure its availability at all times. After all, disasters are not a matter of “if,” but “when.”
Both human-made and natural disasters are inevitable, making proactive planning essential to maintain consistent care delivery. While many are aware of high-profile data breaches and ransomware attacks, it’s the everyday IT mishaps—like lost laptops, access control errors, and security lapses—that often go overlooked. In the healthcare sector, where timely access to data can be life-saving, system downtime can disrupt operations and hinder patient care.
Traditionally, disaster recovery and ransomware response strategies have focused on recovery after an incident. However, according to the NIST cybersecurity framework (CSF), organizations must also implement measures to identify, protect against, and detect vulnerabilities. Understanding the tactics and procedures used by threat actors is crucial for fortifying cybersecurity. By enhancing layers of protection and detection, organizations can shift their focus from merely responding to incidents to preventing them altogether.
Resiliency is central to effective cybersecurity, encompassing the ability to recover from disasters while ensuring data and application availability. Resiliency principles should be applied across all aspects—applications, networks, data, and personnel. Being resilient means being prepared not only to recover swiftly but also to mitigate risks. AWS cloud infrastructure is intentionally designed with security and resilience as top priorities.
As cloud computing services advance, they incorporate more layers of protective and detective capabilities. For instance, Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) boasts an impressive data durability rate of eleven nines (99.999999999%), along with enhanced network protection through private links from on-premises locations to AWS. AWS continuously adds multiple layers of security and resilience to its offerings, exemplifying a commitment to robust data protection.
A centralized data backup and recovery strategy is also essential for data resilience. Solutions like AWS Backup allow organizations to automate the backup and restoration of application data efficiently. They enable the creation and management of immutable backups, safeguarding against both accidental and malicious actions, and facilitating data restoration to specific points in time.
AWS is built to be the most adaptable and secure cloud computing environment available, supported by a comprehensive suite of security tools and over 200 security, compliance, and governance services. Our shared responsibility model with customers enhances protection, and we provide a range of best practice documents, encryption tools, and guidance to aid in implementing application-level security measures. Additionally, AWS partners offer numerous solutions to help meet security objectives, covering areas such as network security, configuration management, access control, and data encryption.
For healthcare organizations aiming to deliver personalized care reliant on vast amounts of data and analytics, a strong security foundation is crucial. If you’re part of such an organization, it’s vital to assess your security posture, data access points, storage systems, and disaster response plans. Establish a comprehensive resiliency strategy that not only allows for recovery but also emphasizes prevention, detection, and mitigation. After all, as leaders in healthcare, our focus is on providing the best care possible, which can only be achieved through dependable, top-tier systems.
To delve deeper into AWS for Healthcare, visit: https://aws.amazon.com/health/
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