Managing cloud-based systems is central to the role of the modern CIO. Doing so effectively and securely goes a long way toward a smoothly running hospital system.
In a May 13 Intelligent CIO report, Ishpreet Singh, CIO for cloud-security company Qualys, gives advice on how CIOs can simplify their cloud-based operations while still meeting their companies' objectives:
- Audit the system. "The goal is to get a full and complete picture of everything within the architecture," Mr. Singh said. "Without this, any next steps are futile as you can't secure what you don't know exists."
- Align the business's technological capabilities with its priorities. "The key elements to consider at this stage are the maturity level per cloud solution, the technical debt incurred over time and how this debt is currently managed," he said.
- Establish the flow of information. "Look at access controls and to what degree systems are currently integrated — or not," he said. "To reach the end goal of simplification, you need to build an end-to-end architecture that can monitor, detect, remediate and measure compliance across the stack."
Create a roadmap for the future. "Focus first on maintaining continuity for critical applications and services, and then work out how to build from there," he said.