FHIR APIs

Part 1: Creating an FHIR API – Google or Azure?

Zach Gardner Cloud, Creating an FHIR API, Security, Tutorial Leave a Comment

Data interoperability is one of the hardest problems in Healthcare IT. The most popular approach is to exchange HL7v2 messages between systems. These pipe-delimited messages are difficult to read by a human and often need additional customizations between implementations.

The next major paradigm shift is towards FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), a JSON-based standard that is evolving ahead of the needs of the industry. Cloud vendors like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are trying to lay their claim to be the one-stop shop for healthcare on the cloud.

This blog is part of a 4 part series diving into an actual use case I recently encountered while working with a client. I had to stand up an FHIR repository/API for 2+ million patients that could be used by hundreds of users every day, as well as countless background processes.

Application Security Whitepaper

White Paper: Security Best Practices in Application Development

Keyhole Software Consulting, Keyhole Creations, Security Leave a Comment

This white paper provides key takeaways for application stewards and software leaders to improve application security, with examples of common application security liabilities and suggestions for remediation. Topics include:

An in-depth look into Security Culture and the importance of the people element in adopting a security-first outlook.
An explanation of common application practices we frequently see in the wild that can be inherently risky, with suggestions for best practices.
A security checklist to determine critical areas of higher risk to prioritize in your journey to a more secure application.
An explanation of the security Surface Area and how to minimize it starting from your source code.
Strategies to protect Authentication and Authorization and a comparison between Third-Party solutions and rolling your own auth.
A deep dive into built-in Application Security and an exploration of strategies that might help your business, including Network-Level Security, WAF, Payload Encryption, SSL, Cloud Configuration, and SIEM…

Application Security

Top Security Mistakes to Avoid in AppDev

Zach Gardner Architecture, Security Leave a Comment

Developing custom applications is one of the hardest professional endeavors, and making them secure is even harder. Malicious actors are constantly changing tactics and strategies, which, unfortunately, makes it impossible to completely eliminate any security threat.

There needs to be a balance between delivering features quickly to meet business objectives and mitigating security risks. Thankfully, these two goals are not mutually exclusive. This blog post dives into the top mistakes that can be made while developing custom applications.

These recommendations are different from what would commonly be seen in an OWASP list, and they should be used in addition to whatever security practices and procedures are already in place by an organization’s infosec department. These recommendations are also written from an application architect’s (rather than an enterprise infrastructure) perspective, so most of them aren’t covered by existing security checklists.

Solid: A New Web Standard Allowing People to Control Their Own Data

Rik Scarborough Development Technologies, Programming, Security Leave a Comment

This post contains a recap of my research into the subject and an exploration of Sir Tim’s so-called new Internet – a technology called Solid. We’ll start by exploring what Solid is, and then we’ll talk about its purposes and how to use it. It’s a pretty cool technology!

So, let’s dive in. What exactly has Sir Tim Berners-Lee created?

Spring Security 5 with OAuth2 Login

Quick Start: Spring Security 5 OAuth2 Login

Brandon Klimek Development Technologies, Security, Spring, Tutorial 1 Comment

Social logins using Oauth2 have become a industry standard. It has revolutionized the way sites share data and has allowed users to quickly access new applications without having to create a new set of credentials. This article gives an example of why OAuth2 was invented and provides a working example of a Spring Security 5 application integrated with Google.