{"id":2728,"date":"2021-04-21T23:25:41","date_gmt":"2021-04-22T06:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.strata.io\/?p=2728"},"modified":"2024-04-09T11:35:22","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T18:35:22","slug":"distributed-identity-enables-multi-cloud-for-healthcare-and-life-sciences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.strata.io\/blog\/identity-access-management\/distributed-identity-enables-multi-cloud-for-healthcare-and-life-sciences\/","title":{"rendered":"Distributed identity enables multi-cloud for healthcare & life sciences"},"content":{"rendered":"
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text][\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row el_id=”s1″][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n
Cloud adoption by healthcare and life sciences organizations accelerated with the events caused by the global pandemic that started in 2019. With remote telehealth and other technology advancements, healthcare and life sciences organizations needed to adjust rapidly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While modernizing quickly is necessary, organizations must also adopt a multi-cloud strategy to remain competitive. Much like building a town full of homes without planning sufficiently for the supporting infrastructure, adopting multiple clouds without a strategy brings many challenges.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Life sciences and healthcare organizations are entrusted with the most precious\u00a0 (and valuable) data: their customers\u2019 personal health information (PHI). Protecting PHI is critical; the loss of trust caused by a breach would be devastatingly damaging.\u00a0<\/span>Hospitals, biotech companies, creators of important life-saving drugs, and more were trying to manage distributed identities securely across multiple clouds, and finding it nearly impossible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Organizations must be able to manage identity securely and efficiently across multiple clouds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In this paper, we examine:<\/span><\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row el_id=”s2″][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”30px”][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n The move towards digital healthcare is unstoppable \u2014 and it’s here to stay. We saw with COVID last year an increased adoption of telemedicine. An<\/span> article<\/span><\/a> in the AMA reported that McKinsey & Co. estimated that physicians saw between 50 and 175 times more patients via telehealth than they did before the pandemic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Additionally, the number of connected devices in healthcare is growing fast. From heart monitoring apps to blood pressure and blood glucose measuring devices, 2021 is seeing the<\/span> introduction<\/span><\/a> of all kinds of new technology using smart devices.<\/span><\/p>\n The consumerization of healthcare data and patient-led engagement is critical to providing exemplary service and we are seeing all kinds of technological advancements in this area.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Patients can easily access their healthcare data through healthcare provider portals. They can refill prescriptions with their phones, make appointments, respond to doctor questionnaires and pay their bills online or through their mobile device.<\/span><\/p>\n Healthcare companies<\/strong>, like many organizations, are adopting multi-cloud<\/strong> for many reasons.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n First, multi-cloud may be the only way to meet the needs of a large organization. Some divisions may find that AWS meets their needs, while another division within the same company may prefer (or need) to use Microsoft Azure AD, for example. They may need access to specialized compute capabilities of different clouds<\/strong> like Big Query from GCP<\/strong>, ML from Azure<\/strong>, or RedShift from AWS<\/strong>. Distributed computing leverages the best of each cloud.<\/span><\/p>\n Some organizations don\u2019t want to get locked into one particular vendor and will use multi-cloud to maintain their choice. Most organizations use 3.5 clouds on average. A study by <\/span>Dimensional Research found that 77% <\/b>of businesses are planning to adopt a multi-cloud strategy<\/strong> in the next two years to better meet their customer service, computing, and regulatory needs.<\/span><\/p>\n Organizations are embracing distributed technology as well. Distributed compute through containerization and the use of Kubernetes enables apps to run on different clouds with little or no rework. Distributed data<\/strong> through the use of data fabrics<\/strong> allow data to be securely managed either behind the firewall or in the cloud (or both). And finally, distributed identity through Identity Orchestration<\/a> allows consistent access to apps and data wherever they are.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row el_id=”s3″][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”30px”][vc_column_text]The Challenges of Multi-Cloud Adoption<\/b><\/p>\n Organizations are moving to the cloud quickly.\u00a0 Healthcare and life sciences are at the forefront of this adoption, with<\/span> 95%<\/span><\/a> having a cloud-first strategy<\/strong> or looking to migrate to the cloud soon. COVID has been a catalyst for companies to adopt the cloud sooner, with many saying they are accelerating cloud adoption to support remote workers and remote patient care.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Approximately<\/span> 80%<\/span><\/a> of workloads have not yet moved to the cloud. Mission-critical applications, legacy applications<\/a>, for example, have not made the move to the cloud. The key challenges for slow adoption include security, time\/budget, and integration and are discussed in more detail here:<\/span><\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text]Data Security<\/b><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>Data security is a critical issue when dealing with healthcare data. Once a person\u2019s healthcare data is breached, there\u2019s no way to create a \u2018new\u2019 medical history, you are breached forever. Recent breaches have shown that an even more aggressive stance of \u2018assume breach\u2019 is called for to protect critical data more effectively.<\/span><\/p>\n With the move to the cloud, identity has become the new perimeter using Zero Trust architectures<\/a> that continually authenticate users. Managing identity and access policies across a range of clouds and IAM vendors are impossible without new tools.<\/span><\/p>\n Limited Time and Budget<\/b><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/b>Many organizations have realized that time is the most challenging obstacle to overcome when moving to the cloud. You can\u2019t make more time, and everything about moving to the cloud<\/strong> requires time. Time is needed to discover your apps and infrastructure that need to move to the cloud. With perhaps hundreds of apps and a dozen identity systems, it can take years and years of manual work to move.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>Budget considerations are also very important. Organizations need to fund identity innovation, but that\u2019s hard to do when you need to continue to spend on outdated infrastructure and technology at a considerable cost. Companies struggle with the need to decommission end-of-life legacy systems and invest in more efficient cloud-based solutions<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>Integration<\/b><\/p>\n Connecting apps and users requires the integration of identity systems and apps, which historically has meant lots of manual work. Connecting identity systems from different vendors running on different cloud platforms also meant manual work and retooling. Rewriting apps to support other clouds and identity systems can be hard if you don’t have ready access to your apps’ source code or don’t ‘own’ the apps.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row el_id=”s4″][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”30px”][vc_column_text]Advantages of Multi-Cloud for Healthcare and Life Sciences<\/b><\/p>\n There are specific advantages for healthcare and life sciences to use multi-cloud. Here, we take a look at a few of the most important considerations.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Adopting a Multi-Cloud Strategy<\/b><\/p>\n Having a multi-cloud identity strategy<\/strong> is the best and most secure approach to managing your growing silos of identities across many clouds and on-premises environments. The following three recommendations will help you understand, plan, and implement a solid course of action.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text]1. Use distributed identity to enforce consistent access across multiple clouds<\/b><\/p>\n Managing identities where they reside using an abstraction and orchestration layer is the only way to break vendor lock-in and ease your management burden across multiple clouds and on-premises applications.<\/span><\/p>\n Strata\u2019s Identity Fabric decouples your apps from identity systems so you can quickly move across clouds and identity providers. This approach ensures a hybrid cloud strategy<\/strong> and multi-cloud strategy<\/strong> that\u2019s cost-effective and scales with your enterprise. This approach also allows you to unify access policies for customers, patients, the supply chain ecosystem, and your workforce<\/span><\/p>\n 2. Leverage secure hybrid access and automation to enable predictable migration to the cloud<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Organizations are looking for a way to migrate legacy and on-premises applications to the cloud<\/strong> but often hold back due to security concerns and the sheer cost of rewriting old applications to modern cloud protocols.<\/span><\/p>\n Maverics Identity Orchestrator\u2122 connects to any identity system<\/a>, transparently migrates users and credentials, replicates and synchronizes policies and configurations, and abstracts authentication and session management. Identity migration enables you to move apps without costly application modernization.<\/span><\/p>\n 3. <\/span>Embrace emerging standards for distributed identity<\/b><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/b>Standards have enabled rapid growth and adoption of the cloud. For example, SAML is\u00a0 the gold standard for federated identity and trust, and additional standards like OAuth and OIDC have evolved to handle authorization. Now there is a need for a standard <\/span>policy<\/i><\/b> that works across vendors and clouds build especially for distributed multi-cloud use cases.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>For legacy apps that don\u2019t support SAML<\/strong> or OIDC<\/strong>, the Identity Orchestrator<\/strong> handles the processing of federated identity. Upon success, the Identity Orchestrator passes the user ID to the web app the way it already consumes identity, for instance, through HTTP headers.<\/span><\/p>\n Recommendations<\/b><\/p>\n Here are some specific recommendations to help you on your journey to managing identities in a multi-cloud<\/strong> healthcare\/life sciences environment.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] <\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t Strata is pioneering the concept of Identity Orchestration for distributed multi-cloud identity. The Strata Identity Fabric enables enterprises to seamlessly unify on-premises and cloud-based authentication and access systems for consistent identity management in multi-cloud environments. Strata\u2019s distributed approach to identity enables organizations to break decades-old lock-in that has prevented a broader transition of enterprise workloads to public cloud infrastructures. The company\u2019s founders co-authored the SAML open standard for identity interoperability, created the first cloud identity services, delivered the first open-source identity products, and are now building the first distributed identity platform. For more information, visit us on the web at www.strata.io and <\/span>LinkedIn<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Maverics Identity Orchestrator connects to any identity system, transparently migrates users and credentials, replicates and synchronizes policies and configurations, and abstracts authentication and session management. Identity migration enables you to move apps without costly application modernization.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] Get the latest articles on all things identity, multi-cloud, and hybrid delivered straight to your inbox<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\n
Trends Driving Healthcare and Life Sciences to Adopt Multi-Cloud<\/h2>\n
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Modernize any app with any IDP in minutes. Join the 'Orchestration Kitchen' workshops.<\/strong><\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
Become a distributed identity expert<\/strong><\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t