Navigating the Cyberspace in an age of the Cloud 

The advancements of Cloud Computing, Big Data and Mobile Computing in the last two decades have increased the volume, velocity, and veracity of data that traverses through the globe. The worldwide data volume grows at 66% every year while every human on the planet creates 1.7Mb of data every second.  

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 55% of All Australian businesses were operating on or linked to the Cloud in 2020. One could expect this number to have significantly grown as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. While doing business on the Cloud has numerous benefits, it exposes businesses to the inherent security risks that come with it.  

In today’s business landscape, nothing can be quite as daunting to a business as a loss of customer data or the disruption to business continuity a data loss can cause. 

Losing customer information, either to an external malicious actor or internal mistakes, could lead to the information being accessed by undesirable parties and huge ramifications both financially and reputationally.  Businesses that fail to take necessary precautions to safeguard their customer data face the risk of fines to the tune of millions of dollars. Similarly, the reputational damage caused to such a business is irreversible, given that in today’s digital world, online reputation can make or break a business. 

How is Centaur mitigating these risks? 

At Centaur Software, we take data security very seriously. As Australia’s most trusted provider of practice management solutions, with over 12,000 dentists switching on our Dental4Windows systems every morning, we continuously work towards securing our practice management applications and internal systems.  We ensure that our infrastructure is protected against today’s threats and future attacks with constant reviews and improvements. 

Below are some examples of how we endeavour to continue to be the most trusted solution provider in the Australian dental industry. 

Privacy 

Centaur is compliant with the Australian Privacy Principles (APP) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR is a regulation that requires businesses to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens for transactions that occur within EU member states. 

While the GDPR may not affect all our customers directly, it overlaps with the Australian Privacy Principles (APP). 

Strong Passwords 

Within each Centaur application, the administrators can set passwords at various levels and areas. The flexibility this security provides allows each practice to establish its own security levels to suit its needs. In addition, practice administrators can enforce complex passwords, lock out previously used passwords, and even set up password expiration periods. 

Security Standards 

ISO 27001 is an international standard for Information Security Management Systems, a framework of policies and procedures for managing the protection of our data and our customers’ data in a systematic method. 

ISO 27001 is about risk management. By adopting this standard, we will continuously monitor and improve our systems to ensure all risks to data held by Centaur, both ours and any customer data, are mitigated. 

Centaur has a target date and is on track to be ISO 27001 Certified by the 1st of January 2022. 

About the Author – David MacDonald 

David joined Centaur Software in 2005 as a Support Analyst and since then moved his way up to Support Team Leader, Support Supervisor and Support Manager – a role he held for nine years. 

In early 2021 David changed his role within Centaur to become its Compliance Officer. 

David holds a Diploma of Management, ITIL Foundation certificate, ISO 27001 certificate, and is currently studying a Foundation of Contract Law course.