Security in the cloud and why moving to the cloud is best fo

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mafiaxxx
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Security in the cloud and why moving to the cloud is best fo

Post by mafiaxxx » Thu Jul 18, 2019 6:50 pm

Below is a video from the AWS innovate conference that started today. You will need to sign up.
Once signed up you will have access to the entire AWS innovate conference.
The video link below is on cloud security and reasons why moving to the cloud is best.

https://onlinexperiences.com/scripts/Se ... 3500249712
Short Circuited Computer Services
Medical and Dental Computer Techs.
http://www.shortcircuited.net

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Ardavan
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Re: Security in the cloud and why moving to the cloud is bes

Post by Ardavan » Mon Aug 05, 2019 4:48 am

And below is a recent article which doesn't require login credentials.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-ac ... 1564911001

The cloud may be sexy, but is by no means a silver bullet to any problem outside the scope of renting infrastructure, especially when you don't fully understand it.
One analogy which works well is cars, you can buy a car (own your computing infrastructure) or lease a car (rent your infrastructure from a cloud provider). If you park in a bad neighborhood and neglect to arm the alarm and lock the car both cars are just as susceptible to getting broken into. I go into detail in the following article:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/demystif ... shemzadeh/

My advice is to aspiring cloud architects is to first learn core computing technologies and best practices before even considering cloud, after all you cannot be an expert in cloud without first being an expert in the core. Jumping straight to cloud would be like an oral surgeon skipping dental school and wishing to jump in there with a scalpel or a wannabe dentist who thinks the job is just drilling, filling and billing and that they don't need to learn biology, nomenclature, and everything else covered in an undergrad degree, dental school, and the experience gained in residency.

My advice to businesses considering the cloud is to do your due diligence in selecting a competent technology partner. It's not that I discriminate against age, but professional experience is valuable and isn't bestowed overnight. If Capital one with their resources and all star team made such a basic mistake (and it really was basic, Ms. Thompson is clearly far from being an elite hacker) then what do you expect from a random guy publishing on linkedin and ranting on forums?
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who will laugh at this joke, and those who won't. ~Annonymous Bug Writer

sammyp42
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Location: Redwood City, CA

Re: Security in the cloud and why moving to the cloud is bes

Post by sammyp42 » Mon Aug 19, 2019 9:25 pm

I'm surprised by how little movement I've seen with regard to making it easier to use Open Dental in a "cloud based" way. But at same time, I completely understand the sluggishness. I personally have worked to develop and build solutions that allow mid/large companies to move their entire desktop application infrastructure into cloud-like data centers. The problem with moving into public cloud tends to be security and cost, both of which are intertwined and it simply doesn't make sense for the size of most dental practices. Considering my background in helping companies cloud enable their infrastructure, it might seem odd that I decided to host my wife's dental practice infrastructure 100% in house. In fact, we just got a new server for her office last year. However, I expect things to change dramatically in next 5 years.

The cost of hosting a HIPAA compliant instance of MySQL in the cloud is dropping and I expect it will continue to drop. With most business class ISPs, bandwidth and latency related issues are less of an issue.

This is the roadmap as I see it - move DB to cloud, implement a web based "shim" that allows office to do basic things without having to launch Windows app... gradually keep adding functionality to web app and ultimately make Windows based app obsolete. Maintain the "open" in "Open Dental" by keeping the web tier open source, but provide IT services to setup for those who either don't want to devote the time, or don't have IT skills; similar to current support model.

I love Open Dental and I feel every penny I pay for support is well worth it. However, when I look into my crystal ball at 5-10 years down the road, the "open" part of Open Dental seems to be deteriorating and this saddens me. It's extremely frustrating that the Web components currently under development are closed source, can someone please explain why?

At same time, I like what I see here: https://www.opendental.com/manual/cloud ... erver.html

We recently started using a virtual receptionist service. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a very good web portal for the remote receptionists to use... so I plan to build one that let's them do easy tasks quickly and securely. I've been wanting to build something in this space for a while, but had been looking for a good ingress point. I was thinking of creating a better patient portal, but it wasn't something we really need. I feel like the current Admin portal is somewhat clumsy and I really want to improve on it... this will actually help make our practice more efficient. I'll probably use the FHIR API, but might communicate directly with DB for some things too; either way, I'll gladly share what I end up creating and maintain the philosophy of openness that initially attracted me to Open Dental. I would like to hear other people's thinking on this topic.

Thanks!

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Ardavan
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Re: Security in the cloud and why moving to the cloud is bes

Post by Ardavan » Tue Aug 20, 2019 8:01 am

It's actually quite trivial to host OD "in the cloud" if you're familiar enough with the stack, underlying technologies, and "cloud" service providers. However I'd advise to be very careful as I've seen plenty of faulty tutorials and people who've gotten it wrong (read: set it up insecurely) far too often, some of whom even charge for their services (the IT industry really should be regulated as all too many incompetent folk are parading as professionals)!

OD doesn't advertise it as cloud, but IMHO their "Middle Tier" is the cloud solution, and of course their future web version. I've been playing with the middle tier for close to a decade and and have several production instances running on Azure for the past few years (even though I'm starting my new position as an "Accenture Infrastructure Consultant" in their "Cloud Migration" division in a few weeks I still cringe at the C word).

With OD you do not want latency between your DB and clients, which is why they've developed the "Middle Tier" so you can host an application server near your DB server and have endpoints connect over HTTPS. Need onsite redundancy? Just setup master-master replication to a DB server onsite, I've done it the cheap way in the past (ssh tunneling) but recently decided to setup proper S2S VPN between Azure and on prem infrastructure, in the grand scheme of things the monthly pricetag is well worth it.

I see the appeal of what you're looking to build and while in the past I've scripted many of my admin tasks to interact directly with our many isolated DBs, the headache just isn't worth it as you'd be running an unsupported system (what happens if something happens to you and your wife needs support?) Use the middle tier, use the CEMT, and do things in a manner which can be easily supported by others. Remember most people are idiots. I learned this the hard way as I've setup quite a unique deployment with NAS based MariaDB10 database servers replicated onsite and off prem and am now in the process of backtracking as neither OD nor local MSPs can easily support my setup as I'm getting ready to move on.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who will laugh at this joke, and those who won't. ~Annonymous Bug Writer

nathansparks
Posts: 172
Joined: Mon Aug 04, 2008 12:39 pm

Re: Security in the cloud and why moving to the cloud is bes

Post by nathansparks » Tue Aug 20, 2019 3:17 pm

I will answer this question:
Question: I love Open Dental and I feel every penny I pay for support is well worth it. However, when I look into my crystal ball at 5-10 years down the road, the "open" part of Open Dental seems to be deteriorating and this saddens me. It's extremely frustrating that the Web components currently under development are closed source, can someone please explain why?
Answer:
The core product as it is is open licensed (GPL v2). We plan to continue to update, develop, and open license that core, which is the Open Dental desktop program, although there is no guarantee that all future development will be open sourced, but I think it very likely (with the exception of certain third party or service tie ins which cannot be open due to licensing restrictions, this has been true for a decade). So the source code is just as open as ever and should remain that way. The other part of 'open' refers to the database, and that schema is still fully published and should remain so in the 5-10 years of the crystal ball, again probably forever.
Third party interaction: Not only are some additional services closed source, there is an acceleration of closed source (not Open Dental core) AND open source programming (open dental core) related to third party interaction. The open source nature of Open Dental has historically led us to suggest to third parties that they just write their own code and distribute as a plug-in. The issue with that is that both plug ins and (even worse) direct interaction with the open dental database has caused more and more support issues. Someone calls about slowness and there is a third party plug-in (which we can turn off to test the speed issue) or even worse a third party may be directly manipulating data and mucking up the data or slowing down the connection. Now I am not saying that third party development is bad, in fact I like it. I just point out that we needed a new way to access data in the database that would not cause support issues for our customers. So we added FHIR support (think web based HL7) and plan to add more shortly.
Lastly, the answer to the question, Web Services/web components:
These are not open source, these are services that we are selling. These are web applications that support and add enhanced capability to Open Dental. Third parties sell some services like these, and we were getting demand for better and lower priced services, so we are adding more. We are also developing mobile applications, as some of our web services are being replaced by mobile applications (just 'mobile web' right now, primarily to enhance remote 'shared' texting capability). These will all be closed source, and should not cause you concern. If they were open source we would not write them, as we would not be able to pay engineers to do so with no income.
In short, the Open Dental core is open source and will remain so, services and third party connectors are not and this is reasonable and not a change in course.

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