Skip to content
Tiatra, LLCTiatra, LLC
Tiatra, LLC
Information Technology Solutions for Washington, DC Government Agencies
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Services
    • IT Engineering and Support
    • Software Development
    • Information Assurance and Testing
    • Project and Program Management
  • Clients & Partners
  • Careers
  • News
  • Contact
 
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Services
    • IT Engineering and Support
    • Software Development
    • Information Assurance and Testing
    • Project and Program Management
  • Clients & Partners
  • Careers
  • News
  • Contact

Mount Sinai’s journey to secure health data in the cloud

Kristin Myers, CIO of Mount Sinai Health System and Dean of IT for its school of medicine, is taking the New York healthcare provider to the cloud, making data protection and security key priorities as she does so.

Myers, who has a degree in law and IT from Queensland University of Technology and an Executive Master of Public Health from Columbia, credits a 2019 return to school, this time to Carnegie Mellon, to obtain a CISO certification for sparking her desire to overhaul Mount Sinai’s approach to cybersecurity.

“It was six months. It was very challenging, but I learned so much and it prepared me, as a CIO, to really understand what a cyber program should be and how we needed to mature moving forward,” she says.

That training prompted Myers to make a number of security moves in preparation for moving Mount Sinai business and clinical applications to the cloud, including, in May 2021, recruiting chief information security officer Rishi Tripathi, whom Myers made sure was on Mount Sinai’s executive steering committee for the cloud.

“Some may think you move [applications] to the cloud and it’s safe, and that’s not correct,” says Myers, who describes the CIO-CISO relationship as an extremely important one. “You have to make sure that you’re building in the security as you’re doing these transitions.”

Taking Mount Sinai to the cloud

Myers began putting together the business case for her cloud migration in the second half of 2021, a process “that took quite a while because not everything falls within the technology budget for data centers,” she says. “It also impacts other budgets like facilities.”

To evaluate those impacts, Myers and her team did a bottom-up budget line-item analysis of data center costs, and had the finance department review their business case.

“As we did the review with our facilities team, the analysis was very clear,” says Myers, who, along with Mount Sinai’s enterprise risk committee, overseen by the CEO, set about evaluating “all three” cloud providers, ultimately choosing Microsoft Azure, supported by Accenture for the managed services element.

“What stood out for us as it related to Microsoft was around their philosophy towards data security, and also how they position themselves around assisting clients within healthcare,” she says.

Myers is also moving some business applications to Oracle’s cloud, including Oracle Financials, Supply Chain, HCM Talent Management and Learning, she says. But for the other business and clinical cloud applications, “What I wanted to do was have something more, I would say, agnostic.”

It’s early days yet for Mount Sinai’s cloud migration. Myers’ goal is to have a majority of healthcare provider’s applications in the cloud within three years.

Mount Sinai’s electronic health record system, Epic, will be among the applications making the move to Azure. Myers has deployed Epic in various parts of Mount Sinai ever since she joined the organization, and plans for more deployments at least through 2025.

“It seems endless, but as we either acquire or merge organizations we have to make sure that we’re able to put the technology there that links all of the hospitals or facilities into the main centers,” she says.

Mount Sinai already uses multiple clouds for genomics research, taking advantage of best-of-breed solutions, but, Myers says, “It didn’t make sense for us to have a multicloud strategy for our business and clinical applications.”

Part of the reason for this rests on talent, given that with multicloud environments different yet overlapping skill sets must be maintained, she explains. “When you think about talent retention and being able to find the right team members to be able to manage these environments, it was clear that we wanted to have 80% to 90% of our applications on one vendor.”

Prepping for the quantum threat

With so much of Mount Sinai’s IT operations moving to the cloud, data security has become top of mind for Myers.

“Security has to be built into that entire migration process,” she says. “Just migrating applications to the cloud doesn’t necessarily protect them, unless you encrypt the data.”

And it’s not just whether the data is encrypted, but how. Encryption algorithms that would take years to crack using today’s computing equipment might be broken in seconds by an attacker with access to a working quantum computer.

While quantum computing remains in the realm of short-lived laboratory experiments, the time will come when quantum computers will be more widely available and the threat they pose more tangible. The White House, for example, is taking the quantum threat seriously, publishing an executive order in January 2022 requiring operators of national security systems to update their security plans and systems to protect against it.

Healthcare organizations are not subject to the same requirement, but they are subject to the same threat: If their data is not adequately protected and encrypted, it could be harvested today and decrypted later, when working quantum computers become a reality.

Myers sees this quantum threat coming within the next three to five years. “It sounds like a long time to start looking at this, but it’s really not,” she says.

To prepare, Myers has hired Sandbox AQ, a Google spin-off, to inventory Mount Sinai’s encryption systems and help make them quantum-safe.

Sandbox AQ offers an audit tool that companies can run on their internal network to identify all the encryption systems in use, and then advise on upgrading them.

Myers expects to have identified the mitigation steps necessary by year-end: “If we start this work now, it puts us in a better position of addressing this vulnerability before it’s exploitable.”

Consider it preventative care for Mount Sinai’s IT assets — and its patients’ data.

Cloud Computing, Cloud Security, Data and Information Security, Healthcare Industry


Read More from This Article: Mount Sinai’s journey to secure health data in the cloud
Source: News

Category: NewsJune 14, 2022
Tags: art

Post navigation

PreviousPrevious post:The extent multinationals are monopolising the talent pool in KenyaNextNext post:What Africa stands to gain with the BT and MTN partnership

Related posts

Barb Wixom and MIT CISR on managing data like a product
May 30, 2025
Avery Dennison takes culture-first approach to AI transformation
May 30, 2025
The agentic AI assist Stanford University cancer care staff needed
May 30, 2025
Los desafíos de la era de la ‘IA en todas partes’, a fondo en Data & AI Summit 2025
May 30, 2025
“AI 비서가 팀 단위로 지원하는 효과”···퍼플렉시티, AI 프로젝트 10분 완성 도구 ‘랩스’ 출시
May 30, 2025
“ROI는 어디에?” AI 도입을 재고하게 만드는 실패 사례
May 30, 2025
Recent Posts
  • Barb Wixom and MIT CISR on managing data like a product
  • Avery Dennison takes culture-first approach to AI transformation
  • The agentic AI assist Stanford University cancer care staff needed
  • Los desafíos de la era de la ‘IA en todas partes’, a fondo en Data & AI Summit 2025
  • “AI 비서가 팀 단위로 지원하는 효과”···퍼플렉시티, AI 프로젝트 10분 완성 도구 ‘랩스’ 출시
Recent Comments
    Archives
    • May 2025
    • April 2025
    • March 2025
    • February 2025
    • January 2025
    • December 2024
    • November 2024
    • October 2024
    • September 2024
    • August 2024
    • July 2024
    • June 2024
    • May 2024
    • April 2024
    • March 2024
    • February 2024
    • January 2024
    • December 2023
    • November 2023
    • October 2023
    • September 2023
    • August 2023
    • July 2023
    • June 2023
    • May 2023
    • April 2023
    • March 2023
    • February 2023
    • January 2023
    • December 2022
    • November 2022
    • October 2022
    • September 2022
    • August 2022
    • July 2022
    • June 2022
    • May 2022
    • April 2022
    • March 2022
    • February 2022
    • January 2022
    • December 2021
    • November 2021
    • October 2021
    • September 2021
    • August 2021
    • July 2021
    • June 2021
    • May 2021
    • April 2021
    • March 2021
    • February 2021
    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    Categories
    • News
    Meta
    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.org
    Tiatra LLC.

    Tiatra, LLC, based in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, proudly serves federal government agencies, organizations that work with the government and other commercial businesses and organizations. Tiatra specializes in a broad range of information technology (IT) development and management services incorporating solid engineering, attention to client needs, and meeting or exceeding any security parameters required. Our small yet innovative company is structured with a full complement of the necessary technical experts, working with hands-on management, to provide a high level of service and competitive pricing for your systems and engineering requirements.

    Find us on:

    FacebookTwitterLinkedin

    Submitclear

    Tiatra, LLC
    Copyright 2016. All rights reserved.