Friday, November 22, 2024
11/22/2024
Category/Funding request: In this opportunity, Part C Capacity Development Program funds are requested in a total amount of $150,000.00 under Infrastructure Development Category to improve the telehealth data security infrastructure. Problem: Since COVID 19 forced the Island and the world to lockdown, the use of technology has become instrumental to ensure retention in care and reduce the gap in access to quality health care. In 2019 the gap in medical visits, according to the RW Core Indicator 4, was 4.32% . At present, this indicator is at 5.34% which still reflects the setbacks causes by the COVID 19 challenges that healthcare has faced for the past years. The current network infrastructure needs improvement to address areas of opportunity for improvement and reduce any vulnerability of the network and cybersecurity attacks, in terms of flat network, redundancy, and performance. Summary of proposed activity: The proposed project even when being of infrastructure development nature, will contribute indirectly to increase access to care by ensuring that all communication and data exchange, as part of telehealth interactions, are protected, within the highest standards possible, and this tool becomes a more accepted and trusted means of quality care among the populations served. PRCONCRA proposes to redesign the network infrastructure (backbone, firewalls, network switches, and Network Access Control), along with the implementation of the Zero-Trust Model (ZTM). Zero Trust is a security framework requiring all users, whether in or outside the organization's network, to be authenticated, authorized, and continuously validated for security configuration and posture before being granted or keeping access to applications and data. ZTM provides security against ransomware and cybersecurity threats by assigning the least required access needed to perform specific tasks with strong authentication capabilities, powerful network access control tools , and pervasive application access policies. Zero-trust network access (ZTNA) solutions grant access on a per-session basis to individual applications only after devices and users are verified.?This ZTNA policy is also applied when users are on the network, which provides the same zero-trust model no matter the user's location.
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