by Natalie Morrison

LONDON, July 12 (APM) - Pharma and the life sciences industry are finally seeing stronger uptake of cloud technology in drug development and marketing in the last few years, partly driven by the need for greater security, experts told APM.

Recent cyber attacks from ransomwares in particular have driven the need to have data stored in the cloud, rather than in one system which users can be easily shut out of, they said in a range of Tuesday interviews.

'The cloud' is a term which describes the use of many servers on the internet to manage and store data as a network. The data is scattered across multiple systems, meaning it is collatable, can be accessed by any authorised person, and - most importantly in terms of cyber attacks - it is not stored on one local server or computer hard drive.

Processes which have traditionally been done on in-house legacy systems in pharma and life sciences, which are increasingly being switched to cloud platforms, include clinical trial management systems (CTMS), electronic data capture (EDC), financial management and enterprise resource planning (ERP), the experts said.

Pharma has been a late adopter of cloud technologies, Emma Rodgers, director of technology, media and telecom market intelligence for UK corporate finance house Clearwater International, told APM in a Tuesday phone call.

Being behind other sectors has been, in large part, due to an inherent mistrust in cloud's security as a novel technology, particularly considering the highly sensitive data associated with patients and proprietary drug developments, the experts said.

However, the drugs' sector is now seeing a big turnaround since it is clear old technologies are often the issue for security breaches. In the recent 'WannaCry' ransomware attacks (APMMA 53084) - in which companies like Merck and health systems such as the UK's NHS were affected - the problem was caused by out-of-date technology, Rodgers and Moe Alsumidaie, of New York-based clinical trials computer data science company Annex Clinical, agreed.

Specifically, people had not updated the old Microsoft operating systems, both Rodgers and Alsumidaie said. Using systems based in the cloud and managed by cloud providers, would have avoided this because security would have been automatically updated and enhanced, Alsumidaie - who is Annex's chief data scientist - added during a Tuesday phone call.

In a call on the same day, Nitsa Zuppas, chief marketing officer at public U.S. cloud solutions firm Veeva Systems, added that there is now "absolutely an understanding" that cloud service providers have specialised teams of people focused on security, and that this far outstrips what an individual company mainly focused on drug development can do.

"One relatively small I.T. department with a relatively small focus on security will not be the same level of security focus as an entire company dedicated to providing cloud software. It's just not the business [pharma is] in," she said.

Many pharma and life sciences firms are now coming around to the idea of cloud, since data is stored online, outside of a singular system, the experts also agreed.

Alsumidaie noted that the sort of blockchain technology associated with cloud platforms - where the data is stored across the network in timestamped 'blocks' which can be accessed separately - is "almost impenetrable from a hacking perspective".

In simpler terms, he explained that if all the data is in one hard drive or internal system, ransomware can block all access because the data is not available elsewhere. If the data is stored virtually in the cloud, the affected computer system can be wiped and the files will still be accessible (from the cloud), he said.

Zuppas stressed that since it is the business of cloud software companies to manage data, they have more sophistication in managing how it is stored and backed up to avoid issues caused by ransomware.

"The more systems that are brought into the 21st century, the less likely they are to be vulnerable to these types of attacks," Rodgers said.

"I think they [companies] have no option but to increase security [using the cloud]," Alsumidaie added, noting cyber attacks "will be more frequent and more intense".

However, Rodgers and Rahlyn Gossen, founder and principal of U.S.-based digital clinical services company Rebar Interactive agreed that, despite many changing mindsets, security will still be a big inhibitor to uptake in pharma because of the highly sensitive nature of the data involved. There tends to be mistrust of new technologies when data is so classified.

Furthermore, for a lot of the bigger players, switching large, expensive and bespoke legacy technologies to the cloud is a big undertaking, Rodgers said.

However, with some leaders "showing the way" - such as GlaxoSmithKline, which is using Accenture's cloud services - comfort levels will likely rise, Rodgers added.

In general, big cloud infrastructure services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) maturing and developing best practices for handling sensitive patient data will also help to make inroads, Gossen said in an emailed Tuesday conversation with APM.

Increasing use of hybrid systems - which store data both on physical, single-tenanted systems as well as the virtual public cloud system - could also allay fears, Rodgers said.

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