{"id":13802,"date":"2018-08-17T15:52:35","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T14:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.devopsonline.co.uk\/?p=13802"},"modified":"2018-08-21T14:19:39","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T13:19:39","slug":"are-healthcare-organisations-finally-making-a-move-to-the-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devopsnews.online\/are-healthcare-organisations-finally-making-a-move-to-the-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"Are healthcare organisations finally making a move to the cloud?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was only a year ago that the global ransomware attack WannaCry was infecting more than 230,000 computers, spanning at least 150 countries. In the UK, we saw the story garner many column inches and public opinion centred on an overwhelming concern about the implications of such an attack and the somewhat muted response of the NHS.<\/p>\n

Even though NHS organisations did not report any cases of harm to patients or of data being compromised or stolen, about a third of hospital trusts in England were disrupted and NHS England data showed that at least 80 out of 236 trusts were affected \u2013 with 34 infected and locked out of devices (of which 27 were acute trusts), and 46 not infected but reporting disruption. A further 603 primary care and other NHS organisations were infected by WannaCry, including 8% of GP practices (595 out of 7,454).<\/p>\n

In the report \u2018Lessons learned review of the WannaCry Ransomware Cyber Attack<\/a><\/u>\u2019 released in February 2018, NHS\u2019 Chief Information Officer for Health and Social Care William Smart explained that the work of a cybersecurity researcher, who activated a \u2018kill-switch\u2019 on the evening of Friday 12 May, had the effect of stopping WannaCry infecting further devices. Without this intervention, it is likely that the impact that WannaCry had on services would have been even greater.<\/p>\n

But a question still remains, is there anything else that could\u2019ve been done to avoid the incident, mitigate the risk of sensitive data falling into the wrong hands, and quickly recover from such an attack? The answer could be the cloud.<\/p>\n

Is data more secure in the cloud?<\/h2>\n

After your data has been encrypted by a ransomware, recovering it is almost impossible, thus, investing in prevention seems to be the securest solution. The first step would be creating secure backups of sensitive data on a regular basis. Keeping in mind that in case of a ransomware attack you need to physically disconnect the storage device to avoid it being infected, it would be best to keep your data backed up in the cloud rather than on-premises.<\/p>\n

In an ideal world, the best solution would be to be warned early enough, so you can quickly isolate a ransomware infection and recover important data before the entire network is affected. Some CSPs have enhanced their solutions, for example here at iland<\/a><\/u> we now offer deep packet inspection, encryption, antivirus, anti-malware scans, and integrated reports for compliance and regulatory audits.<\/p>\n

These services can include:<\/p>\n