Re: [Gnumed-devel] GNUmed (debian) servers and security

[Dave Cramer]

On 28-Jan-08, at 9:56 PM, James Busser wrote:

> On 28-Jan-08, at 8:24 AM, Dave Cramer wrote:
>
> > That being said, I'd simply use a dedicated network connection  
> > between the two machines that could not be sniffed.
>
> Connecting from a remote private machine *over which you have  
> control* can be done using a ($$$) dedicated network connection, or  
> a VPN like openVPN.
>
> Connecting from a remote machine *over which you have less (or no)  
> control* is the problem.
Ah, now I get it!.  Interesting argument for a web client.

> Many doctors have a need to connect to their EMR from inside the  
> hospital. Even the doctors who let others look after their patients  
> when in hospital, in many cases, still visit the patients at least  
> in special cases or may be at the hospital for other reasons. It  
> would not be unusual for at least some GPs to spend 30 or more  
> minutes per day at a hospital at least a couple of times per week  
> (in some cases they might spend a full morning or afternoon) and the  
> inability to connect to their EMR from inside the hospital is not  
> going to be acceptable.
>
> Some hospitals might soon provide enough wireless access that a  
> doctor with their own laptop might be able to set up a VPN, but the  
> majority I am sure will find ports and VPNs blocked. So I think that  
> doctors who could have a copy of GNUmed on a hospital machine (or  
> USB stick) still have to be able to connect via ports 80 or 443  
> without a VPN.
openVPN is quite adept at using port 80 or port 443. It can be setup  
to share port 80 or 443 with a web server.

> For the purpose of a doctor accessing a single patient (or small  
> number of patients' EMR) it is acceptable to let the hospital proxy  
> decrypt and re-encrypt the doctor's SSL traffic to their GNUmed EMR.
>
> I think it is important to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks on the  
> connection between the hospital and the GNUmed server so unless the  
> hospital offered some tunnel to this server then the SSL would be  
> needed unless people figure some other way for a secure connection

I've also kicked around the notion of a REST server for an EMR which  
would  remove the direct database connection.

Dave