Healthcare data security has been around for a long time, but as cloud computing gains more and more traction, healthcare providers as well as healthcare software vendors, would like to use the cloud advantages and migrate healthcare data, or run healthcare software from a cloud infrastructure. In this blog I’ll focus on specific cloud computing healthcare security concerns and how cloud encryption can help meeting regulatory requirements.
The first step to securing healthcare data is to identify the type of healthcare information and the appropriate cloud storage for it. Visual healthcare data is mainly comprised of large media files such as x-ray, radiology, CT scans, and other types of video and imaging. Such files are often stored in distributed storage, such as Amazon Web Services S3 (Simple Storage Service), or Microsoft Azure blobs. Personally Identifiable Information (PII), such as patient records, is often stored in a relational database as structured data.