Cloud security in healthcare: Top 7 strategies to protect your medical data

Cloud computing offers multiple benefits to the healthcare industry, including cost-efficiency and access to advanced technologies like telehealth or AI-powered diagnostic tools. However, improper configuration can lead to data breaches and other security risks. This highlights the growing reliance on robust protection solutions to safeguard medical data and ensure compliance. Hence, the health cloud security market is constantly growing, estimated at $11.85B in 2024 and predicted to reach $27.4B by 2030, according to the NextMSC report. But how to protect medical data and utilize cloud services safely? In this article, we will share key practices to enhance cloud security in healthcare and help you protect your medical data.

Top 6 common threats in healthcare cloud security

The medical and public health sector faces an alarming rise in cyberattacks targeting cloud infrastructures. The HIPAA journal compared the number of patient records breached in January across five years from 2020 to 2024. The data suggests a significant spike in 2024 compared to the previous years.

Let's look at the main types of threats causing these breaches in cloud security healthcare:

• Unauthorized access involves using cloud resources without permission. Attackers exploit overly permissive access, open ports, and poor management of passwords and keys. Unauthorized access exposes sensitive medical data, jeopardizing privacy and compromising confidentiality through security lapses.
• System misconfigurations occur when settings are improperly implemented, exposing data to attacks. Human error, especially in complex configurations and setups with limited automation, is a common cause, often exceeding intended risks.
• Ransomware attacks are especially critical for medical organizations due to the sensitive nature of their data. Cybercriminals encrypt an organization's information, demanding payment for its release. This tactic exploits the urgent need for data access in healthcare settings.
• Malware can infiltrate systems, compromising patient data, disrupting operations, and causing financial damage. It can steal sensitive information, interfere with electronic health records (EHRs) and medical devices, compromise billing data, and spread it through interconnected systems.
• Phishing involves using deceptive emails or websites to trick staff into revealing confidential data or granting unauthorized access. These attacks often impersonate trusted entities, targeting busy medical specialists to obtain credentials, patient data, or financial information. Successful phishing can lead to data breaches and service disruptions.
• DoS and DDoS attacks aim to overwhelm systems and make them inaccessible. In healthcare, these can disrupt critical services like EHRs and telemedicine, risking patient safety and causing financial losses.

Main security challenges in the healthcare cloud:

Cloud security in healthcare faces unique challenges due to the sensitive nature of medical data and the critical importance of such services. Let's take a closer look at the most common ones:

• Securing medical data: Cybercriminals hunt for health data specifically, as it is 10 times more valuable than other types on the black market. The rapid increase in the amount of this data intensifies the number of vulnerabilities to advanced ransomware and cyber attacks. Transitioning to complex cloud services also introduces exploitable vulnerabilities.
• Insider threats: High turnover in the healthcare industry leads to frequent personnel changes and inconsistent oversight of access privileges. Cloud environments can make it even harder to detect inappropriate permission patterns that may result in critical data loss.
• Lack of control: Cloud providers offer rapid environment creation and testing, benefiting developers and data scientists but challenging IT teams. Quick deployments may bypass security standards, leading to vulnerabilities. Inadequate security configurations in cloud services are a primary cause of data breaches.
• Skill gap: With rapid cloud adoption, medical organizations are experiencing a shortage of IT professionals with cloud technology skills. Cloud engineering talent is in high demand, and competitive salaries are challenging for nonprofit organizations and healthcare startups. Partnering with experienced cloud security consultants like N-iX can help bridge this gap, providing the expertise needed to secure medical systems.
• Regulatory compliance: Compliance with such regulations as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) or GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is mandatory for healthcare organizations. This requirement complicates their security initiatives, particularly in cloud environments. Ensuring data protection and privacy align with these regulations demands rigorous protection measures and constant vigilance.
• Complex attack surface: Medical providers face the challenge of securing a diverse and expansive technological ecosystem. This includes protecting legacy on-premises and cloud systems, Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, and more. Integrating these technologies creates an extensive and complex attack surface, significantly increasing the difficulty of maintaining safety across the entire IT infrastructure.
• Third-party vulnerabilities: Relying on multiple third-party vendors and devices in healthcare introduces additional protection risks, especially in cloud environments. Data flows through various external systems, increasing the complexity of maintaining security and compliance. This interconnected ecosystem makes it challenging for medical organizations to ensure comprehensive protection and adhere to regulatory requirements across all touchpoints in their infrastructure.

Read more: Advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing in healthcare

7 essential strategies for cloud security in healthcare

As cyber threats grow more sophisticated, it becomes especially challenging to secure medical organizations. To help you address these challenges and reduce the number of cloud threats, we asked our security engineers and industry experts to share their main best practices. Here are key takeaways for cloud computing security in healthcare:

1. Implement regulatory compliance management

To keep adherence to healthcare standards, it is crucial to conduct compliance audits quarterly. Our security engineers utilize automated tools to ensure continuous adherence, such as AWS Audit Manager, Database Activity Monitoring (DAM), Healthicity Audit Manager+, etc. Implementing these tools can significantly enhance the security posture and compliance readiness of medical organizations operating in cloud environments.

In addition, establishing a dedicated compliance team with specialized expertise in healthcare regulations and cloud security is highly recommended. This team will continuously manage compliance requirements, address regulatory changes, and report any compliance breaches to relevant authorities.

2. Employ robust data protection strategies

Safeguarding medical information in the cloud requires a comprehensive approach that combines data encryption, continuous monitoring, and a well-structured backup plan. Data encryption is a critical shield, transforming sensitive information into an indecipherable format during transmission and storage. This process ensures the data remains incomprehensible and secure even if unauthorized users gain access.

Complementing encryption, data monitoring continuously tracks access patterns, usage, and potential anomalies. The monitoring system observes who interacts with the data, when and where access occurs, and what actions are performed. Advanced monitoring tools can instantly alert administrators to suspicious activities, enabling swift responses to potential threats.

A thorough backup and disaster recovery plan forms the final layer of defense. By regularly backing up cloud data, organizations can quickly recover from cyber incidents or data loss events. This strategy minimizes operational disruptions and ensures continuity in the face of unforeseen challenges, improving cloud security in healthcare.

3. Implement comprehensive access management

While working with healthcare businesses, our security experts deploy a multi-layered access control system to protect sensitive data in the cloud. This system centers on Identity and Access Management (IAM), centralizing user identity and permission management across cloud services. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) complements IAM by requiring multiple verification forms, significantly reducing unauthorized access risks.

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) strengthens these measures by aligning access privileges with job roles, ensuring medical professionals only access necessary information. For example, accounting teams should only see financial data, while medical staff should have access strictly to patient records. Privileged Access Management (PAM) with just-in-time (JIT) provisioning ensures that elevated privileges are granted only for the minimum amount of time necessary to complete a specific task. This integrated approach creates a robust security framework that safeguards patient data, maintains regulatory compliance, and preserves the integrity of cloud-based healthcare systems.

4. Conduct auditing

Auditing plays a vital role in cloud security for healthcare as a key performance indicator, demanding accurate attention. As more and more workloads are moved to the cloud, the potential for audit findings grows, which means it's essential to update auditing processes and procedures during the implementation phase.

Additionally, incorporating User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) specifically tuned for healthcare workflows can enhance the auditing process. UEBA uses machine learning to analyze user and device behavior, identifying anomalies that indicate insider threats or external attacks. By focusing on unique healthcare activity patterns, these analytics provide tailored insights for the early detection of unusual behavior.

Our security experts utilize dedicated healthcare auditing frameworks, like GCloud Healthcare API, which can provide better audit performance compared to plain old logging. It's also important to remember that data often comes from multiple cloud services, which might not have the same level of security as dedicated endpoints. So, keeping a close eye on all the relevant cloud services is crucial to ensure solid evidence of auditing performance. This helps ensure that there's enough capacity support and that the audit loop is closed effectively.

5. Organize incident response process

Regardless of the preventive measures implemented, the possibility of a security issue still exists. Our cloud experts strengthen medical IT systems by developing a comprehensive incident response plan that outlines clear roles, responsibilities, and guidelines for detecting, investigating, and mitigating protection incidents. Regular reviews and updates of the plan, along with incident exercises or simulations, ensure its relevance and effectiveness.

Automation is key in streamlining incident response processes, enabling rapid detection and response to potential threats through automated monitoring, alerting systems, and playbooks. Though automation reduces the burden on cybersecurity teams, our experts usually complement it with human oversight. This system enables rapid and efficient responses to breaches, reducing disruptions to patient services while safeguarding confidential information.

6. Third-party system integration security

Securing third-party integrations is essential for maintaining robust defenses in medical IT infrastructures. One of the primary strategies is to develop secure API gateways to mediate all communications between third-party systems and cloud environments, ensuring that only authorized and validated interactions occur. Comprehensive input validation and sanitization at all integration points are also crucial to prevent injection attacks and other forms of data manipulation. Targeted penetration testing should be conducted to identify and address vulnerabilities specific to integration points.

Additionally, containerization strategies can help isolate legacy applications, minimizing the potential impact of any security breaches. This multi-faceted approach ensures that third-party integrations do not become weak links in the medical cloud security architecture.

7. Enhance employee expertise

Training staff and fostering a security-first culture is a crucial best practice for cloud security in healthcare. Comprehensive security training should be provided to all employees, covering data privacy and identifying potential threats. However, training alone isn't sufficient; medical organizations must also cultivate a culture prioritizing protection at every level. This involves leading by example, encouraging open communication, and regularly discussing safety in team meetings.

At N-iX, we help healthcare organizations build this foundation by offering tailored cloud security consulting and training services. Partnering with us, health companies can ensure their teams are well-equipped to protect patient data and maintain the integrity of their systems.

How can N-iX help you protect your healthcare data in the cloud?

When it comes to safeguarding sensitive data in the cloud, N-iX is a trusted partner with deep expertise in cybersecurity and cloud technology. Since 2002, our team of 2,200 tech professionals has helped medical organizations establish robust cloud security practices and mitigate vulnerabilities.

N-iX specializes in cloud transformation, security architecture design, threat detection, and compliance monitoring. Our adherence to leading industry standards-PCI DSS, ISO 9001, ISO 27001, and GDPR-ensures your sensitive data remains protected at every stage of your journey. Partner with N-iX to navigate the complexities of cloud security in healthcare to harness the full potential of cloud services.