How does Citrix Cloud migration impact security for healthcare data?

All answers to this question.

In my experience as a Security Architect, Citrix Cloud is actually very well-designed for healthcare. The beauty of their architecture is that the "Control Plane" (where the brokering happens) is in the cloud, but the "Resource Location" (where your actual patient data lives) can stay on-premises or in a private cloud. This separation is key for HIPAA. You aren't moving the data; you are just moving the management interface. As long as you secure your Cloud Connectors and use MFA, you are significantly reducing your attack surface compared to an older on-premise gateway setup.

   Answered 2024-01-12 by Deborah Lewis

Is the latency significantly higher when the broker is in the cloud compared to when everything was hosted locally in the hospital data center?

   Answered 2024-01-14 by Brian Walsh

• Brian, if you use the "Citrix Gateway Service," the latency is actually often better because users hit the closest global POP (Point of Presence). However, if you are still hair-pinning traffic back to a local NetScaler, you might see a slight 10-20ms increase. For most EMR applications like Epic or Cerner, this is virtually unnoticeable to the end-user. The trade-off for the increased security and reduced patching overhead on the management side makes the transition a net positive for most IT teams.

     Commented 2024-01-16 by Jonathan Reed

We made the switch last year. The automated updates for the Delivery Controllers saved us so much time during the last zero-day vulnerability scare.

   Answered 2024-01-18 by Megan Scott

• That's a huge point, Megan. Security isn't just about the architecture; it's about how fast you can patch. Citrix Cloud takes that burden off the local team entirely.

     Commented 2024-01-20 by Elizabeth Thorne