There have been lots of coverage in the media recently about the perils of using ‘the Cloud’ to store sensitive information (just ask some of the female celebrities who have been caught up in it all!) Whilst the data that practitioners store for their clinic is of a different nature, these leaks have highlighted how important it is to make sure that your data is being stored safely and securely. There is also legislation governing how you store your data, with The Data Protection Act requiring that personal data “shall not be transferred to any country outside the EU”. Therefore it is important that you ensure your cloud back-up provider does not host their servers outside of the EU so that you remain compliant with the Data Protection Act. Many of the larger cloud back-up providers do host their servers elsewhere. Read more about cloud storage here.
Here at TM2, we offer two options for looking after your data: 1. You can host your software locally which means you look after your data yourself 2. TM2 Hosted service will look after your data. As a result of the recent media attention on data security some of our TM2 Hosted customers have been asking us for some more information on how we protect their data. Here are the answers:
- TM2 are Data Protection Registered in the UK.
- We have a disaster recovery plan and TM2 Systems are monitored, audited and reviewed regularly by the company’s Information Assurance Forum.
- TM2 client data is stored in two secure, UK based, data centres.
- Our data centres are secured by a hardware firewall and are protected against accident, attack, theft, fire, flood, environmental and other natural hazards.
- TM2 client databases are backed up hourly, client files are backed up twice daily
So when you are deciding on how to store your patient details, make sure you think about whether your provider or you (if you are storing your own data) is storing your data safely and securely to keep you on the right side of the Data Protection Act!