After AIIMS cyber attack, PGI mulls disaster recovery system – ET HealthWorld

Chandigarh: The recent cyberattack on the AIIMS, Delhi, has highlighted the need for a secure and robust computing infrastructure in health care institutes. A foolproof, safe and secure system would ensure patient care does not suffer in case of a security breach in the computing systems.

The PGI is considering to have a separate data centre and disaster recovery system for its hospital information system (HIS) 2. This will help online system to take over and restore any critical applications that may be affected in case of a security breach. “Our progress is satisfactory and by next three months, we should have it in place,” said PGI director Prof Vivek Lal.

Although primary data will be saved in the systems stationed on PGI premises, a disaster recovery centre will be set up to enable the system to come online and ensure uninterrupted services in case of any unforeseen events. By replicating the data and maintaining a backup, redundancy would ensure high availability.

Therefore, the disaster recovery centre is an alternate safety provision, which will restore the operations when the primary system crashes. “We are drafting policies for the centre.

For instance, once the primary system goes off, how disaster recovery centres comes automatically and takes over so that the work goes on seamlessly and how much time it will require for recovery after a disaster strikes,” said an official at the PGI.

The institute is deliberating the critical areas, where the centre shall immediately take over. Sources said the HIS 2 shall be one of the main agendas in the standing finance committee (SFC) scheduled for next month. Once cleared, the competent bodies will give the final nod and the system fast-tracked.

To ensure safety and protection, the PGI is working on having its own data based server without the need to use an outsourced one.

“As our data is precious, it cannot be left to others. Thus, we will owe the servers for the data centre and have the control of the entire encrypted data,” said another official.

Besides, there will also be a separate backup server “The specifications of the hardware are almost complete. We are also in talks with the top hardware providers who need to customise the requirements according to the workflow of the departments here,” said the official.

There is also the challenge of assessment of the specifications required for such a system as this would be the first time that a system would be managing health care related data at such a large scale.