Privacy Preserving and Security Management in Cloud-Based Electronic Health Records—A Survey

The rise of cloud computing in the previous decade has seen an increase in integrated healthcare facilities. The cloud not only provides third-party infrastructure, but also acts as a Medical Record Storage Centre by facilitating the exchange of electronic health records among hospitals and physicians. This paradigm of shift has offered healthcare organizations flexibility with cost, development and infrastructure maintenance. The biggest success deciding factor of cloud on healthcare is the level of security and confidentiality it offers. Because electronic health records (EHRs) store sensitive data about a patient, it is the responsibility of cloud service providers and data centres to ensure confidentiality, privacy and trust-based security mechanisms. As more and more healthcare migrations are moving to the cloud day by day, ensuring safety of security breach and privacy preservations and ensuring trust remain a challenge as incidents of security attacks and hacking are widely reported.