For a growing biotech company, managed IT services are one of the most important building blocks needed to achieve success. In addition to promoting staff productivity and keeping operations running smoothly, managed services offer vital security controls to protect your company against risk. Here are 6 reasons why a biotech company needs to consider an integrated approach to IT management.
To support its infrastructure, a biotech in the field of life sciences needs to be able to provide their team with ready access to data. Its team members need to retrieve updated data with ease and speed, and their work quality or progress may suffer it they’re relying on data sets that don’t reflect changes in real time. Data needs to be securely created and available for multiple departments and the data in these databases needs to have a single authoritative source to reduce duplication efforts and ensure that results can be validated.
Communication and collaboration are elemental components of your company’s operations and development. You need a secure platform for project management, sharing data, and general communication. Entrusting your IT to a experts can help you utilize the best possible communication methods for your team’s needs. Moreover, it enables your people to stay focused on their most important work rather than get bogged down by time consuming IT functions and troubleshooting intermittent problems.
A biotech’s proprietary information is the foundation of its ability to compete in an industry in which protecting intellectual property is imperative. You don’t need to protect yourself against only other industry participants, you need to consider that individuals who have nothing to do with your field could potentially attempt to infiltrate your information and ransom its release. It experts can help you secure it from the beginning and ensure that your data security model is built to scale.
In addition to protecting information, all biotech companies need to safeguard their assets and accounts. An IT breach could result in a significant monetary loss for which there may be no available remedy. As an example, a staff member could receive an email that appears to come internally from a colleague directing a transfer or payment of funds. However, if the email is in fact fraudulently generated, the money that was transferred is now gone. Scenarios such as this can happen in any type of environment in which a business manages funds and payments. In a company whose assets are built upon investment before revenue, any type of financial fraud could be crippling and could potentially dissuade investors from continuing to contribute capital.
Biotech and Life Sciences companies are consistently faced with ensuring their work passes FDA regulations and audits. That path to passing those easily is through a healthy IT set up, which can only be done by investing heavily into knowledge and resources. Using a managed IT company enables your company to access those resources at a much larger scale than trying on your own.
Massachusetts’ data security law requires that all companies who manage any personal information need to have a Written Information Security Plan outlining how information will be securely managed. A WISP has to include protocols for the secure storage and encrypted transmission of messages containing individual’s personal information. While some biotech companies who are already familiar with HIPAA compliance procedures pertaining to information for individuals involved in case studies or clinical trials, they may find that these procedures don’t always readily translate into the day-to-day data management. It’s helpful to work with an IT provider who is experienced in helping companies create customized WISPs. If your company experiences a data breach but doesn’t have an established WISP, you may face significant liability. Having a WISP shields a company from liability in two ways. First, it creates procedures that mitigate the possibility of a breach from occurring. Second, a company that experiences a data breach but is able to demonstrate that it had a WISP and it followed its policies may be shielded from liability related to the effects of the breach. 201 CMR 17.
When you have a comprehensively integrated network and communication system, you’ll have better assurance that key staff members are following your data security guidelines. Secure login credentials, encrypted data transmission, and protected data storage ensures that staff will transmit and save data safely and compliantly.
Enlisting professional help to develop and manage IT services that are customized to your company’s individual needs will promote efficiency, organization, and security. Consider getting an expert evaluation of your current operational needs and how you can enhance your IT infrastructure.