Over the past year and a half, it is no secret healthcare organizations have been targeted by bad actors. Headlines across major news outlets continue to share how hospitals across the country are falling subject to cyber-attacks. In 2023, healthcare cyberattacks have affected more than 100 million people. Sensitive data including patient medical history, insurance accounts, and medical provider accounts were the top targets of these attacks, forcing hospitals without the appropriate business continuity strategy and cloud data backups to cancel critical appointments, surgeries, and shift critical care patients to other hospitals.
To ensure patient data and hospital operations are protected, it’s important to have a customized plan that fits a provider’s specific needs to protect them from bad actors and to improve daily operations, efficiency, and reliability without overspending on cloud services. Alternative cloud providers, like OVHcloud US, have multiple solutions that address the biggest pain points healthcare providers and hospitals face from redundancies to protecting patient data, providing high-performance storage for quick access to patient data, offering automation for managing data, and more.
Disaster Recovery and Ransomware Protection
Author: Pascal Jaillon, Senior Vice President Product at OVHcloud US , HIPAA , healthcare complianceThe best way for healthcare providers to protect and to prepare for disaster, whether it comes from a bad actor, a natural disaster, or an outage, is with a comprehensive disaster recovery plan. Disaster recovery solutions allow providers to make full copies of applications and systems and set recovery points to help ensure data is always being backed up. Most cloud providers encourage customers to follow the ‘3-2-1’ rule: three copies, two backups, and at least one different location.
Distributed data protection of multiple backups in different locations enhances recovery and protects healthcare providers from unplanned downtime and data loss. It also helps prevent unplanned costs when coming back online. When patients are in need, having quick access to data is critical and can make a big difference in patient lives. Once data is recovered, healthcare providers can access patient data through a journaling system that catalogs the file type, date, and more which will allow providers to find the most recently saved and recovered patient files.
Quick Access to Patient Data with Redundances and Automation
Hospitals and healthcare providers require high-performance solutions and multiple redundancies to ensure patient data is easily accessible and protected. Having a dedicated environment through Private Cloud combines the benefits of cloud computing with security and full control of IT infrastructure. Private Cloud solutions ensure better storage performance and faster response times. This solution helps hospitals better manage form applications, such as electronic health records, and provides faster access to this data for more efficient patient management. In addition, this solution provides resiliencies in case of application degradation, because hosts are triaged to better ensure customers are still receiving high-performing cloud services.
Healthcare organizations can also leverage VMware solutions, amongst others, to provide automation around adding capacity to storing patient data. For example, VMware vSAN solutions provide the high-speed infrastructure to support the performance, availability, security, and scalability requirements of today’s healthcare organizations all while being HIPAA and PCI DSS compliant. Healthcare providers need to streamline their infrastructure and provide a seamless environment that reduces liabilities, streamlines data across highly transactional applications, cuts costs, and increases efficiency.
Healthcare organizations have become a large target for bad actors. Solutions like vSAN help ensure infrastructure has multiple redundancies and flexible storage capabilities to minimize downtime and data loss if attacked. This solution also helps to ensure patient data is readily available and replicated for a more mobile-friendly work environment. Moreover, this solution offers increased data transfer capabilities for electronic health record (EHR) and electronic medical record (EMR) systems, mobile applications, medical imaging, and more.
High Storage Availability for Patient Records
When a patient is admitted through the emergency room, being able to retrieve patient medical records and results from medical imagery is key. High-performance object storage solutions allow providers to retrieve patient media files quickly to treat patients more efficiently. These storage solutions are perfect for MRIs, CT scans, X-rays, video imaging, and more. For instances where it is not an emergency, but providers need to access medical history, solutions similar to S3 Object Storage are well suited for archiving medical records. Many healthcare providers are required by law and or state regulations to save patient healthcare data for a specific number of years, and S3 Object Storage allows providers to store and access these massive amounts of data securely, without impacting everyday performance.
High Performance, at a Predictable and Affordable Price
Today’s healthcare providers move a lot of data, between uploading new patient data and pulling archived patient data from storage for patient visits. Ingress and egress fees for moving data can be problematic for cloud customers, and at many major cloud providers, customers often experience ‘sticker shock’ from unplanned monthly fees for moving data. Alternative cloud providers like OVHcloud US make monthly cloud pricing predictable, transparent, and affordable, which is key for healthcare providers who are focused on taking care of patients and saving lives.
With the correct cloud provider, customers can easily control their own network and manage their data protection through the user-friendly portal. Reliable, transparent, and cost-effective cloud services are key as healthcare providers remain a top target for bad actors. With a myriad of cost-effective solutions, alternative cloud providers stand ready to help protect providers and their patient’s data.
