Can firebase be PIPPA and HIPPA compliant? - firebase

Has anyone been able to build hippa and Pippa compliant apps using firebase. More specifically for real time and chat messaging?
some rules require data to reside in Canada.

The Seven Fundamental Elements of an Effective Hippa Compliance Program represent the barebones requirements that HIPAA compliant apps must have in place in order to address HIPAA privacy and security standards. The Seven Elements include:
Implementing written policies, procedures and standards of conduct
Designating a compliance officer and compliance committee
Conducting effective training and education
Developing effective lines of communication
Conducting internal monitoring and auditing
Enforcing standards through well-publicized disciplinary guidelines
Responding promptly to detected offenses and undertaking corrective action

Related

Extract sentences with specific word/patterns in it

I´m trying to extract sentences with the word "privacy|Privacy" in it. The sentences can be found in text inside my dataframe. The text is safed as a list of multiple chr. strings, because I´m working with a bunch of different files. I can´t manage to get it to work with grep, but made it work using gsub. The problem I got now is, that it only extracts the first sentence of the text and doesn´t include the next ones.
csv_edgar$privacy_1A <- gsub(".*?([^\\.]*(privacy|Privacy[^\\.]*).*","\\1", csv_edgar$item_1A, ignore.case=TRUE). Thats the code I´m using atm.
Text:
The Company employs information technology systems to support its
business, including ongoing phased implementation of an ERP system as
part of business transformation on a worldwide basis over the next
several years. Security breaches and other disruptions to the
Company’s information technology infrastructure could interfere with
the Company’s operations, compromise information belonging to the
Company and its customers, suppliers, and employees, exposing the
Company to liability which could adversely impact the Company’s
business and reputation. In the ordinary course of business, the
Company relies on information technology networks and systems, some of
which are managed by third parties, to process, transmit and store
electronic information, and to manage or support a variety of business
processes and activities. Additionally, the Company collects and
stores certain data, including proprietary business information, and
may have access to confidential or personal information in certain of
our businesses that is subject to privacy and security laws,
regulations and customer-imposed controls. Despite our cybersecurity
measures (including employee and third-party training, monitoring of
networks and systems, and maintenance of backup and protective
systems) which are continuously reviewed and upgraded, the Company’s
information technology networks and infrastructure may still be
vulnerable to damage, disruptions or shutdowns due to attack by
hackers or breaches, employee error or malfeasance, power outages,
computer viruses, telecommunication or utility failures, systems
failures, service providers including cloud services, natural
disasters or other catastrophic events. It is possible for such
vulnerabilities to remain undetected for an extended period, up to and
including several years. While we have experienced, and expect to
continue to experience, these types of threats to the Company’s
information technology networks and infrastructure, none of them to
date has had a material impact to the Company. There may be other
challenges and risks as the Company upgrades and standardizes its ERP
system on a worldwide basis. Any such events could result in legal
claims or proceedings, liability or penalties under privacy laws,
disruption in operations, and damage to the Company’s reputation,
which could adversely affect the Company’s business. Although the
Company maintains insurance coverage for various cybersecurity risks,
there can be no guarantee that all costs or losses incurred will be
fully insured.
You could use str_extract_all with an alternation:
regex <- "[A-Z][^.]+\\b(?:Privacy|privacy)\\b[^.]+\\."
sentences <- str_extract_all(input, regex)[[1]]
[1] "Additionally, the Company collects and stores certain data, including proprietary business information, and may have access to confidential or personal information in certain of our businesses that is subject to privacy and security laws, regulations and customer-imposed controls."
[2] "Any such events could result in legal claims or proceedings, liability or penalties under privacy laws, disruption in operations, and damage to the Company<U+2019>s reputation, which could adversely affect the Company<U+2019>s business."
In the snippet above, input is the sample text you provided in the question.
Suggesting awk command:
awk '/[pP]rivacy/{print}' RS="." input.txt
Result from provided sample
Additionally, the Company collects and stores certain data, including proprietary business information, and may have access to confidential or personal information in certain of our businesses that is subject to privacy and security laws, regulations and customer-imposed controls
Any such events could result in legal claims or proceedings, liability or penalties under privacy laws, disruption in operations, and damage to the Company’s reputation, which could adversely affect the Company’s business

r shiny - is uploaded data safe and secure?

I'm building a shiny app where users upload transaction data to get access to an analytics dashboard. Can I assure these people that their data is secure from sniffers/hackers and will be removed from the shiny server when their session expires? How does this actually work in Shiny? (Note that I'll be hosting my app on shinyapps.io)
This is not to do with shiny, but whatever server you're storing the data on, how you're using encryption/hashing, and software/app security methods you've used to protect against specific vulnerabilities.
Having said that, here's the (rather minimal, IMHO) security statement for shinyapps.io:
shinyapps.io is secure-by-design. Each Shiny application runs in its
own protected environment and access is always SSL encrypted. Standard
and Professional plans offer user authentication, preventing anonymous
visitors from being able to access your applications.
I would say that the burden will heavily fall on you to use good encryption and data storage practices.
There are many official and unofficial guidelines you can look to for guidance on data storage. One which big companies, particularlly companies going public, must follow is Sarbanes-Oxley.
From grtcorp.com:
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX Act) was passed by Congress and signed
into law in 2002 in response to major cases of financial fraud, of
which the rise and collapse of Enron is the best known. The overall
focus of the measure is on financial reporting responsibilities, and
ensuring that financial audits are genuinely independent.
However, SOX also includes provisions that relate to the security and
preservation of financial data. And the standards set out for its
implementation "recognized that senior management can't just certify
controls ON the system, these controls also have to control the way
financial information is generated, accessed, collected, stored,
processed, transmitted, and used through the system."
Senior management is thus held ultimately responsible for financial
data security, including putting in place appropriate controls and
procedures to ensure this data security. The good news is that
powerful tools, including data discovery and Data Masking, are
available to meet these standards.
I would also encourage you to familiarize yourself with OWASP's list of the top 10 major web app vulnerabilities:
https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Top_Ten_Project

Enterprise Service Bus vs BPM

Both ESB and BPM tools that I have worked on take in some input , call multiple steps to fulfill a task. The difference that I have seen is that in ESB everything is automated - the process is automatically triggered and involves a number of external calls / data is transformed and sent to appropriate system for consumption. In case of BPM system , the process is either started manually or automatically and it involved series of decision steps some of which involve manual decision steps.Once the steps are done , the task is marked as complete. Is it possible to explain the clear distinction between BPM and ESB?
I think you are right that anything achievable with a BPM can be achieved just fine with an ESB and some Web UI that enables invocation of manual steps. But this is true if you are only looking strictly from the technical point of view. In a more mature SOA, where a lot of different parties and roles are involved, both ESB and BPM have their distinct place.
The distinction you're looking for is more "fuzzy" and it is about the focus of these tools, their intended end-users and the type of logic they compose. Here is my humble attempt at explaining the difference between ESB and BPM:
Focus and goals
ESB is more focused on enablement of interoperability, separation of concerns, and abstraction of technical details. It has much more of an infrastructural role, it also cares about monitoring, scalability performance, availability, state deferral. In the ESB your goal is to enable the creation of a federated interoperable layer, by abstracting all technical details and to exposing reusable functionality.
BPM is more business-focused and in a perfect world scenario it is managed by business people and business analysts themselves that modify processes without having any idea about any technical details. The BPMN language is all about workflows and is designed to be business-friendly. In the BPM your goal is to implement real business processes by using these building blocks.
Intended users
ESB services will be governed by architects and custodians (still, in accordance to requirements by business analysts).
BPM workflows will ideally be managed and modified by business people, business analysts and the like.
Composed logic
In a BPM the compositions (workflows) consist of business-oriented tasks (e.g. check customer loyalty level and give him a discount if user X approves and his level is gold).
In the ESB the compositions generally consist of more technical services (e.g. retrieve this from the database, combine with that from this component, transform with xslt). It is possible to have an orchestrated task that implements an entire workflow the way a BPM does, that is entirely business-centric and without any reusability whatsoever, but you don't have the handy tools and visualisation to be able to easily delegate the management of this business logic to business people.
Having said all the above, ideally if you have a mature SOA, you'll have a BPM layer on top of one or multiple ESBs and corresponding Service Inventories that have:
Entity and Utility services on the bottom (implemented in the ESBs)
Task, and in some cases Orchestrated Task services that compose said entity and utility services (implemented in the ESBs)
Workflows that use and reuse all these services in the BPM layer on top of the ESBs.
I hope this gave you a good initial idea of the differences. Feel free to ask if you need more information.
Plamen's answer is already very good. I disagree with the introduction
anything achievable with a BPM can be achieved just fine with an ESB
and some Web UI that enables invocation of manual steps
His later explanation puts this into perspective though.
From the top of my head some aspects a modern Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) handles (better) in comparison to an ESB:
Graphical modelling of the business process suitable for domain experts
No technical detail required, e.g. without service composition
the right granularity is reached when the task performer can be specific automated (system) vs manual (Human, possibly with system support).Below this granularity level the service composition start (ESB)
Simulation of the workflow (without or without services connectivity), based on assumptions or real-life audit data
Dashboard and Reporting features for operational control, tactical analysis and strategic continuous process improvement (all on business level / KPIs)
Organizational modeling, management of authorizations
task routing and assignment based on the business process model (e.g. roles) or dynamic based on conditions, business rules, decision tables, real-time analysis of user skills, workload and capacities, etc.
Management of the context of the business process, e.g. business objects, documents,references to data in external systems, references to other workflows belonging to the same business entity
Keeping an Audit Trail of all activities on business level (not a log file)
Comprehensive worklist management and search features
Features to operational management like definition and monitoring of business SLAs, priorities, benchmarks, criticalities, automated or manual task delegation
Organizational aspect like deputy management, business calendar
initiation of or changes to existing workflows based on defined internal or external technical or business events
BPMS and ESBs are complementary systems. The BPMS is the business layer which orchestrates the composite business services defined in the underlying ESB layer. The ESB layer is a technical mitigation layer which supports the definition of basics services, their aggregation into composite services and other aspects like transformation and standardization of data formats. Since the layers are close the products in both areas have adopted more and more features from the the other layer. The overlaps are increasing as the vendors extend their feature sets.
Depending on the complexity of the system landscape a comprehensive BPMS which covers many ESB features can make an ESB obsolete. An ESB which extends into the business layer is unlikely to reach the feature set and ease of use required by business users. If an ESB reached this business level then it would likely be rebranded and offered as a BPMS.
If you compare the website of ESB's like Mule and BPMS like Eclipse Stardust then the different focus (technical integration platform vs business process management: modeling, simulation, execution, reporting, analysis & improvement) should become evident.

iTunes Connect: Is your app designed to use cryptography?

I am submitting an app that uses the dropbox SDK to upload photos from the iPhone to a specified folder in dropbox. I am stuck on a question as I don;t know how/what/if dropbox sdk uses cyroptograhy. Can you help me answer the following questions?:
Is your app designed to use cryptography or does it contain or incorporate cryptography? (Select Yes even if your app is only utilizing the encryption available in iOS or OS X.)
If so,
Does your app qualify for any of the exemptions provided in Category 5, Part 2 of the U.S. Export Administration Regulations?
Make sure that your app meets the criteria of the exemption listed here. You are responsible for the proper classification of your product. Incorrectly classifying your app may lead to you being in violation of U.S. export laws and could make you subject to penalties, including your app being removed from the App Store. Read the FAQ thoroughly before answering the questions.
You can select Yes for question #2 if the encryption of your app is:
(a) Specially designed for medical end-use
(b) Limited to intellectual property and copyright protection
(c) Limited to authentication, digital signature, or the decryption of data or files
(d) Specially designed and limited for banking use or "money transactions"; or
(e) Limited to "fixed" data compression or coding techniques
You can also select Yes if your app meets the descriptions provided in Note 4 for Category 5, Part 2 of the U.S. Export Administration Regulations.
If not,
Does your app implement one or more encryption algorithms that are proprietary or yet to be accepted as standard by international standard bodies (such as, the IEEE, IETF, ITU, and so on)?
Etc.
I work for the Dropbox API team. I'm not a lawyer, nor familiar with the App Store process. Presumably it asks this question of everyone submitting an app, and many apps already approved use the Dropbox SDK.
That said, reading through the question ISTM that the Dropbox SDK qualifies under (b) and (c). In the SDK that links with your app we use OAuth and SSL for authentication, SSL for keeping your users' files safe from prying eyes, and either digital signatures or cryptographic hashes to safeguard against data corruption and to detect duplicates.
For more info on this topic see also a recent thread on the Dropbox forum: https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=114805

Healthcare communication standards for web based applications?

hello i am going to develop a web based application that is Electronic Health records one of the constraints is the my system should follow a communication standard that is complied by most of such type of applications.
i go for a standard known as HL7 health level 7 but i am bit confused!
problem is i can't differentiate between the two standards (HL7 and CDA 2.0) may be they have some relationship with each other but i am not sure about it any one can help me|????
thanx in advance
Health Level 7 (HL7) is a non-profit organization providing a framework and related standards for exchange and retrieval of electronic health information. Their standards relate to documents, messaging, applications and concepts.
CDA 2.0 is one of their standards relating to clinical documents such as discharge summaries and progress notes.

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