Organizational and Technical Security Considerations for Laboratory Cloud Computing

Area of Science:

• Healthcare IT
• Clinical Informatics
• Laboratory Management

Background:

• Clinical and anatomical pathology services increasingly adopt cloud information technology (IT) solutions.
• Cloud IT offers benefits like scalability and cost-effectiveness but introduces security and privacy risks.
• Factors such as unfamiliarity and complex systems increase the attack surface for cloud-based infrastructure.

Purpose of the Study:

• To guide healthcare managers and IT professionals on cloud IT requirements and risks in laboratories.
• To outline technical, operational, and organizational best practices for mitigating cloud security and privacy risks.
• To align cloud best practices with healthcare regulatory frameworks.

Main Methods:

• Describing organizational best practices including hiring, IT group relations, security audits, and employee onboarding/offboarding.
• Highlighting operational security, account security, and auditing/logging best practices.
• Detailing resource-level security features of individual cloud technologies.

Main Results:

• Identified key organizational best practices for secure cloud adoption in laboratories.
• Detailed specific operational and technical security measures.
• Emphasized the foundational importance of organizational and process-based requirements before technical solutions.

Conclusions:

• Laboratory directors, managers, and IT professionals must prioritize organizational and process-based requirements.
• Addressing these fundamentals establishes the groundwork for effective technical security and successful cloud infrastructure implementation.
• A comprehensive approach integrating organizational, operational, and technical best practices is essential for secure cloud utilization in pathology.