Google Cloud Platform for the pharmaceutical sector: secure digitalisation
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it new ways of behaving, in both personal and professional spheres. One of the most notable changes, due to Cloud technology, has been the implementation of remote working or teleworking. Thanks to this, many pharmaceutical companies have continued to be productive at such a critical time, but have also increased their awareness in terms of the security of information against the risk of facing multiple threats. Tools such as Google Cloud Platform respond perfectly to these new security requirements, whilst also offering new and interesting possibilities for the pharmaceutical sector.
Information security is one of the main issues that technological directors of pharmaceutical companies take into account when it comes to deciding on a digital working environment.
In this post, we are going to look at some of the ways in which Google Cloud Platform enables the digitalisation of the pharmaceutical sector, guaranteeing the maximum security of the corporate information that the companies of this sector hold.
Google Cloud Platform boosts the digital transformation of pharmaceutical companies
Cloud platforms like Google Cloud Platform are an environment that offers numerous benefits to companies from the pharmaceutical sector, starting with the boost to their digital transformation.
In this sense, the company Sanofi is a clear example of how to take advantage of a cloud environment like Google Cloud Platform to optimise your working and the management of your information (to which it adds value), as well as how to improve your performance and consider the shift towards a new business model; a business model where data becomes extremely important, creating, for example, new therapies based on knowledge of data or new solutions/recommendations for public health systems in accordance with your data.
Other notable advantages that Google Cloud Platform provides the pharmaceutical sector are:
- More precise analytics thanks to multiple origins of information. A cloud platform enables a detailed and precise analysis of the information the company handles (medical records, patient portals, biomedical data, apps or devices with the Internet of Things, for example). A combination of all of this data offers new business opportunities and rapid intervention of diseases.
- Single repositories of 100% integrated data. The cloud enables the vast amount of data that pharmaceutical companies, particularly large ones, manage to be stored in large single repositories of data. This data is usually found dispersed among numerous subsidiary companies and partners all over the world.
- Implementation of a genuine collaborative culture. Solutions like Google Cloud Platform facilitate the implementation of a real collaborative culture, which enables a more fluid circulation of information and an increase in productivity. The benefits of this new culture are the reduction of the time required to discover and market new medicines, as well as an improvement in decision-making thanks to the participation of all of the stakeholders involved (highly useful in processes such as the management of clinical trials and pharmacovigilance).
- Greater fluidity in exchanging data with third parties (externalisation). Streamlining data collection notably improves the sharing of data with other actors in the pharmaceutical sector (research centres, health authorities, hospitals, etc.), always with the guarantee of undergoing strict security and access controls.
Security, one of the strengths of Google Cloud Platform for the pharmaceutical industry
In an interesting post from its corporate blog, Google revealed importantnews in terms of security developed for its Google Cloud Platform environment, which fit perfectly with the security requirements of the pharmaceutical sector.
The related latest developments include:
1. Expansion of security management through APIs
Using specific APIs (Cloud Identity groups API and the service account API for Cloud Identity customers), Google Cloud Platform enables users who are not admins and service accounts to manage groups and grant security privileges, as well as to have a detailed view of the security actions carried out by these groups.
2. Automation of the management of groups and their members
One of the processes that takes up the most time in managing groups is controlling the members, as well as granting security privileges. The new version of Google Cloud automates these processes thanks to the management of dynamic groups. In other words, using the appropriate user attributes when sending queries about the group members, it is possible to create groups in which the management of members is automatically updated.
Thanks to Cloud Identity, Google Cloud Platform also enables members to leave a group on a specific date and time. This feature is extremely useful if working in project groups for very specific periods of time or with subcontracted companies for a specific time.
3. Additional security controls in groups by the users themselves
In its latest update, Google Cloud Platform allows security labels to be added to security groups for Cloud Identity. This way, it is possible to distinguish between different groups such as, for example, those that are used to control access and those that are used for communications (e.g. Email), which prevents these groups from including subgroups from outside of the company or only email groups.
In its latest update, it will also enable the creation of groups to be simplified, adding users and granting permissions through the Google Cloud Platform console.
4. Strategic prioritisation of the security efforts
If an admin has detailed information about logins and data, he or she can protect them more easily and set priorities when it comes to managing security.
The membership hierarchy and indirect membership visibility API for Cloud Identity enables you to view users who directly or indirectly belong to a group, see the groups to which a specific user directly or indirectly belongs or even find routes of a user to a group.
With the new verification API included on Google Cloud Platform, it is also possible to find out whether a specific account forms part of a group. Furthermore, it is possible to have the information necessary to know the structures and hierarchies of complex groups, an extremely useful feature for making decisions about which users to add or remove from groups.
Finally, Google has also announced that Google Cloud Platform and the business editions of Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) will soon include features to identify the main types of confidential data.
Specialists in cloud technology for the pharmaceutical sector
In this article we have outlined the advantages thatGoogle Cloud Platform offers the pharmaceutical industry, guaranteeing the peace of mind of having a work environment on the cloud that ensures maximum security of information and offers new business opportunities.
At Intelligence Partner, we are a Premier Partner of Google Cloud, so we have an enormous expertise in this platform and in projects in the pharmaceutical sector. We make all of this knowledge and experience available to you so we can build an environment together that meets the technological, security and business needs of your pharmaceutical company.
Are you interested? Contact us without any obligation.
