BioTrackTHC Launches First Live Seed-to-Sale Cannabis Traceability System in a FedRAMP Authorized Environment for Hawaii Department of Health

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., March 30, 2017 /AxisWire/ — BioTrackTHC has partnered with the Hawaii Department of Health (DOH) to be the first in the history of the cannabis industry to deploy a live seed-to-sale cannabis Traceability System in a FedRAMP authorized environment. This makes Hawaii the first state in the nation to benefit from the security offered by a cloud environment that has earned the highest federal cloud security endorsement possible for its medical cannabis dispensaries computer software tracking system.

“The BioTrackTHC team invested an incredible amount of time and effort into this high priority project, and we are excited to see it transform from last year’s concept to clean execution,“ said Patrick Vo, President and CEO of BioTrackTHC. “We are grateful for the Hawaii Department of Health’s trust in us to get it right the first time.”

BioTrackTHC, utilizing Amazon Web Service’s Government Cloud (AWS GovCloud), has met all necessary requirements to host its live government cannabis seed-to-sale Traceability Systems in one of the most secure cloud platforms in the world. Hawaii’s state officials elected to launch their state’s cannabis program with BioTrackTHC’s new AWS GovCloud security offering, allowing Hawaii to reach this historic security feat first. This upgrade affords Hawaii’s cannabis industry with the highest level of data security available and is also expected to increase the speed of the state’s Traceability System.

“We’re pleased to know that our state’s seed-to-sale Traceability System is now housed in the most secure cloud server available,” said Keith Ridley, chief of the DOH Office of Health Care Assurance. “This ensures safety and comfort for our licensees, business operators, and our patients, who can all be confident in knowing their business data and protected patient information is being stored in the most secure Traceability System in the world.”

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) is a government-wide program whose decision-making body is comprised of the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) from the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the General Services Administration, with additional collaboration from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Security Agency, Office of Management and Budget, and the Federal CIO Council. The program provides a standardized approach to the assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring of a cloud product’s security.

Amazon offers its AWS GovCloud to authorized government agencies and their contractors who have been properly vetted for eligibility. The AWS GovCloud has been granted a Joint Authorization Board Provisional Authority to Operate (JAB P-ATO) and multiple Agency Authorizations (A-ATO) under the FedRAMP High Baseline; this is the highest impact level attainable, and only four cloud service providers in the nation have met the requirements of this high-security model. This new FedRAMP High Baseline includes over 400 security measures and allows government agencies to use these and only these cloud environments for high-impact data where the loss of data confidentiality, integrity, or availability could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic effect on organizational operations, assets, or individuals. Agencies including the Department of Defense and NASA have utilized Amazon’s GovCloud for its reliability and world-leading security measures.

In order for states to enforce compliance and cannabis businesses to remain compliant, it is imperative that these government cannabis activity tracking systems remain up-and-running while securely housing highly sensitive information such as patient data, plant and inventory data, and financial data; making security and redundancies of the utmost importance. Any downtime or outage of BioTrackTHC’s Traceability Systems could put states and businesses at risk of non-compliance, not to mention that downtime or data loss could be detrimental, even catastrophic, to their daily operations.

“Security is the absolute highest priority for BioTrackTHC. The system stores and must protect patient data—information coming in directly from the Department of Health—so maintaining this high level of security remains a top priority,” said David Terrell, CTO of BioTrackTHC. “What we follow is C.I.A.: Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. In the unlikely event of an emergency and a system goes down, we have multiple offsite encrypted backups that remain private and confidential, but can be put into place in a matter of minutes with the proper security keys.”

Though FedRAMP is a federal government program, this does not mean that the data stored in a FedRAMP High Baseline authorized environment is accessible to federal agencies. It means that the cloud environment has met all of the highest security requirements of the program so any government agency or government contractor can utilize that environment to handle and store the government’s most sensitive, unclassified data (such as health records). The data within the AWS GovCloud hosted BioTrackTHC Traceability System is secure and inaccessible unless an individual or agency is able to provide the proper security keys, which are exclusively held by BioTrackTHC executives and their security team.

Following the successful deployment of Hawaii’s seed-to-sale Traceability System to the AWS GovCloud, BioTrackTHC is now in a unique position to deploy new solutions into the FedRAMP authorized environment faster than anyone in the industry. Due to the fact that zero re-tooling is required, the company expects the change to produce a net-positive impact on deployment timelines compared to a non-FedRAMP environment.

About BioTrackTHC
Bio-Tech Medical Software, Inc., through its BioTrackTHC division, develops and provides effective, cutting-edge technology solutions for the emerging medical and recreational cannabis industry. Visit www.biotrack.com/ for more information, email sales@biotrackthc.com or call 1-800-797-4711 to order software. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for important updates and relevant industry news. BioTrackTHC currently holds 6 government contracts and operates in over 2000 locations across 24 states, D.C., Canada and Puerto Rico. Bio-Tech Medical Software, Inc. is a privately-held company, based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

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