Design and Implementation of Security in Healthcare Cloud Computing

Abstract

As technology keeps on evolving, different organisations make use of the recent trends in technology and the health sector is no exception. As the cost of healthcare services is increasing, healthcare professionals are becoming scarce. Healthcare organisations have also adopted the latest technology of cloud computing. The introduction of cloud computing has proved to be a feasible idea on the information technology community. Rather than keeping the patient’s information in a file in a health facility he/she was treated in, the information is stored in a cloud so that it can be shared amongst all health organisations and health professionals. Information is stored in a central place where it can be easily accessed, thus saving time and avoiding repetition of always writing the information each time a patient is attended to in a different facility. However, there are issues with sharing such information on the cloud since it is sensitive information. Ensuring this sensitive information security, availability and scalability are a major factor in the cloud computing environment. In this study, we proposed a mathematical model for measuring the availability of data and machines (nodes). We also present the current state-of-the-art research in this field by focusing on several shortcomings of current healthcare solutions and standards and we further proposed a system that will encrypt data before it is being sent to the cloud. The system is intended to be linked to the cloud in such a way that, before the client submits the data to the cloud and, the data will go through that system for encryption. The paper presents the steps to achieve the proposed system and also a sample encrypted and decrypted file.