Building a secure medical research organization

We are witnessing a dramatic increase in the use of complex technological systems for better management and exploitation of abundant data from different sources. The Imaging Science and Information Systems (ISIS) Center, a medical research center at Georgetown University is an agile organization that is subject to fast changing requirements and new application deployments. ISIS requires an agile, secure IT infrastructure based on network management best practices that enables rapid business implementations, accommodates innovative deployments and applications, and supports its business plan. Adapting emerging technologies can facilitate communication, productivity and access but, also entails higher security risks, more assets to manage and increased requirements for compliance with established standards and security rules. In this paper we will describe the approaches we took to build and secure an IT infrastructure at the ISIS Center that enables researchers, collaborators, vendors and contractors to work in an environment that hosts systems for different purposes with no compromise to security and data confidentiality.