The cloud has made our daily lives so much easier in ways that we can take for granted today. For example, you can easily save documents and photos into the cloud and access them with ease from any device, but enabling this kind of efficiency and accessibility for your whole pharmaceutical business is another story!
You need to protect vast amounts of critical data in alignment with regulations such as the MHRA if you’re in the UK or HIPPA if you’re in the USA; you need to safeguard your IP; align your people, processes, policies, and IT systems together so that nothing falls into the cracks; and ensure that no matter the weather, your business is resilient to disruptive threats.
Cloud technology has a huge range of benefits on offer, but many pharmaceutical businesses aren’t tapping into its potential because of cyber security and compliance concerns. So, in this blog, we explore what cloud technology can offer your business, some myths surrounding it, and relatedly, why cloud security is essential for enabling the possibilities of the cloud in your pharmaceutical business.
What is Cloud Security?
Cloud security is a concept that refers to the stringent measures and technologies used to protect data that is stored online. For pharmaceutical companies adhering to rigorous standards such as ALCOA+, regulatory bodies like the MHRA, and pharmaceutical standards such as GMP, GCP, and GLP, cloud security goes beyond preventing theft or unauthorised access. It ensures comprehensive compliance with regulations and the safeguarding of the integrity and confidentiality of incredibly sensitive data.
This has rightly raised some concerns about the suitability of cloud services for processing this data. However, what is really essential here is to ensure that cloud solutions meet these rigorous standards, rather than dismissing them out of hand!
Busting Myths Around Cloud Security for Pharma Companies
Myth 1: “The cloud isn’t safe for sensitive data.”
The reality here is that cloud platform and solution providers can offer a breadth and depth of cyber security tools and data protection features compared to traditional on-premise server setups. The key thing is to ensure everything that you need for adhering to required standards is offered by the provider, something a specialist IT service provider can help with.
Cloud providers invest a lot in the latest technologies for securing the data that their infrastructure is hosting on behalf of companies in the pharmaceutical space and beyond. They are highly concerned with preventing losses of data, data breaches, or disruptions from affecting their services.
Myth 2: “Once data is on the cloud, you lose control over it.”
This is actually a misconception. Cloud security tools offer detailed logs and control features that allow companies to monitor data access and usage. In fact, there are cloud service providers that can enable you to process data under ALCOA+ principles, including the essential need for the traceability and auditability of your data, along with wrapping it around with multiple layers of robust protections.
Myth 3: “Cloud security is too complex for pharmaceutical companies.”
It is true that the relatively more complicated data handling needs of companies in the world of pharma would need to be reflected in their cloud services and security measures. The key is to work with specialised IT service providers that know your industry really well; they know the regulatory territory and how it maps out against the technical one.
They can simplify the whole process of validating, designing, and deploying cloud services that meet your data integrity needs. While your business also gets to benefit from the flexibility, scalability, and potential cost-efficiencies that cloud technology can offer!
Cloud Security Best Practices
Implementing cloud security best practices is imperative for pharmaceutical companies across their IT infrastructure and systems, particularly to meet ALCOA+ standards, which entail ensuring that data is Attributable, Legitimate, Contemporaneous, Original, and Accurate, plus complete, consistent, enduring, and available:
- Select Compliant Cloud Providers: It’s essential to choose cloud services that are able to adhere to pharmaceutical regulations, featuring necessary protocols and tools that align with GMP, GCP, and GLP standards.
- Implement Strong Access Controls: Access to sensitive data should be tightly controlled. Role-based access ensures that employees can access only the data necessary for their roles, minimising potential security breaches.
- Conduct Regular Audits and Monitoring: Continuously monitoring cloud environments helps identify and address unauthorised access or anomalies promptly, reinforcing data security. Given the data volumes and complexity of pharma companies, using advanced AI-driven tools for monitoring data flows, as well as compliance monitoring software, can be crucial here.
- Utilise Advanced Data Encryption: Encrypting data both in transit and at rest ensures it remains secure and inaccessible to unauthorised parties, protecting it from potential breaches. Make sure the latest standards, such as AES-256, are being used.
- Develop Robust Disaster Recovery Plans: As discussed in our recent blog, comprehensive backup and recovery strategies are crucial to ensure quick restoration of data, maintaining business continuity even in the event of significant disruptions.
How Can Cloud Technology Benefit Pharmaceutical Businesses?
Adopting cloud technology can enhance more than just security; it significantly boosts operational efficiency and fosters innovation within pharmaceutical companies:
They offer unrivalled scalability in real-time adjustments or through the push of a button. Cloud solutions are able to adjust to your company’s growth. They can expand without the traditional infrastructure costs, delays, and limitations associated with maintaining traditional physical IT infrastructure.
Cloud solutions can also enhance collaboration and productivity by enabling real-time co-editing of documents, bringing document work and communications together under one roof, and enabling more integrations between different datasets and applications. This can accelerate your R&D efforts while sharpening your broader competitive edge.
They offer the ability to harness your data better, including analysing it to drive superior R&D activities and make more profitable decisions. Cloud providers enable this by providing the software and data processing abilities that you need to visualise and understand your data at scale.
And of course, they can actually better empower regulatory compliance! Cloud technology can simplify and automate a number of IT-related compliance activities to comply with standards and regulatory requirements.
That’s not all of the benefits the cloud can offer you, but this should give you a good idea of the possibilities that it allows. You can speak with an IT support and solutions provider that specialises in serving pharma to get insights tailored directly to your business.
Final Thoughts
For pharmaceutical companies, migrating to a cloud-based environment can enable innovation with greater assurance and foresight. Robust cloud security not only protects sensitive data but can also be done in a way that aligns with frameworks for regulatory compliance and operational superiority. Particularly for biotechs and pharma companies, ALCOA+ standards can be met using cloud solutions.
By connecting cloud technology to adherence and data integrity on the one hand, and strategic and operational excellence on the other, pharmaceutical firms have the opportunity to securely drive digital transformations that can get them ahead. Specialised IT service providers can make a huge difference in enabling this, giving the full potential ROI that cloud solutions can offer while having the expertise needed to ensure they are implemented in alignment with these strict requirements.
Curious to see the difference the cloud can make for your pharmaceutical or biotech company? We’d love to help you see the possibilities and provide actionable advice. It all starts with a conversation with our friendly team.
ITforPharma: Providers of Exceptional IT Services and IT Solutions for Pharmaceutical Companies and Startups
As a specialised IT services partner to the pharmaceuticals sector, we’re an experienced and dedicated team serving pharmaceutical businesses across the world. From fast, secure, and reliable IT to compliance with regulatory bodies such as the MHRA, FDA, and digital transformation solutions, we’re here to help you with all things IT. Curious to see the difference technology can make for your business? Get in touch with our team today.
