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Customer Case Studies, GitHub Tips, and More: DataMotion’s February Hot List 732 312 Team DataMotion

Customer Case Studies, GitHub Tips, and More: DataMotion’s February Hot List

Happy March, readers! As always, we hope that this blog post finds you well.

The DataMotion Blog hosted articles on a variety of topics in February, including the latest GitHub aggregate, three security-minded New Year’s resolutions every business should make, and the second installment of our Meet the Secure Message Center series.

The new month has ushered in a major news item for us–we are proud to announce that DataMotion’s secure mail and Direct Secure Messaging are now HITRUST CSF Certified! Read more about our latest certification in our press release which went out earlier this week. Learn more about HITRUST.

Finally, Team DataMotion’s Doug Rubino and Christian Grunkemeyer will be heading south to sunny Florida to attend HIMSS22! Doug and Christian are excited about this year’s event and look forward to meeting with other attendees to discuss challenges and opportunities in healthcare. We invite you to set up an onsite or virtual meeting with Doug or Christian to learn how DataMotion’s platform helps healthcare organizations modernize internal processes and improve the client and patient user experience, all while helping you stay within regulatory compliance.

And now, without further ado, we present the February Hot List.

What You May Have Missed in February

Elevating Efficiency and the Customer Experience: Meet DataMotion’s Secure Message Center Inefficient internal processes. Lagging response time. A sub-optimal customer experience. What do these have in common? These were some of the challenges and pain points that our customers had before becoming customers. In this blog entry, Christian Grunkemeyer continues the Meet the Secure Message Center series with some real-life customer case studies. In case you missed it, be sure to read part one of this series.

GitHub Enrichment: 4 Tips for Efficiency and Security We recently wrapped up our latest Hot Tips series on social media, where the DataMotion dev team shared some of their recommended tips and tricks for using GitHub, including scanning for secrets and comparing repo versions. In case you missed part one of the series aggregate, you can find it here.

Three New Year’s Resolutions to (Securely) Achieve Business Goals It’s never too late to set goals for your business. The year is still young, and DataMotion’s Sarah Parks has gathered three solid recommendations to help your organization meet your goals, and has provided additional learning materials for a deeper dive. (In case you missed it, stop by this blog post from January, where we share recommended New Year’s resolutions for developers.)

We’re Hiring

DataMotion is growing! We’re looking for a group of talented folks to join our team and have a number of open roles. Stop by our careers page to learn more about the requirements for each, and how to apply.

That is about it for this month’s Hot List. As always, we encourage you to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for more Hot Tips, as well as industry news, insights, thought leadership, and company updates. We also invite you to subscribe to the DataMotion Newsletter to have all of the above and more delivered to your inbox once a month.

Thank you for an outstanding February, and we look forward to seeing you in March!

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Elevating Efficiency and the Customer Experience: Meet DataMotion’s Secure Message Center 732 312 Christian Grunkemeyer

Elevating Efficiency and the Customer Experience: Meet DataMotion’s Secure Message Center

No matter your org type or industry, your customer (or patient, policy holder, or client) is royalty. I say royalty because while you undoubtedly strive to provide them the royal treatment and a smooth customer experience, let’s face it—depending on your industry, compliance is king. And accommodating regulatory considerations can add hurdles to both internal and customer-facing processes, leading to a less-than-optimal experience for clients, and internal inefficiencies.

That is where DataMotion’s solutions and APIs, notably the secure message center, come into play.

In this second installment to the Meet the Secure Message Center series, we take a deep dive into three real-life customer use cases. Each organization is in a regulated industry and sought to improve their customer experience and simplify internal processes while remaining within their industry’s regulatory compliance.

Ensuring an Optimal Insurance Experience

A healthcare insurance start-up had compliance-related, internal efficiency challenges that interfered with the customer experience. The challenges they cited are not uncommon in the sector, where organizations are under strict data protection regulations. But the need for secure and compliant data exchange led to additional steps for both staff and customers. Here is an example, starring customer service reps named Agent A and Agent B, and Mrs. Smith, a policyholder.

Mrs. Smith needs information about her health insurance policy. Agent A will start the call by asking for some basic info—name, member id, etc. When Mrs. Smith asks her question, the agent might need more information, such as a snapshot of a prescription and other sensitive information, so the agent can look up records and eligibility. Because personal identifiable information (PII) is involved, Mrs. Smith would need to send this data securely via email. Below are the steps the agent would need to complete to accommodate Mrs. Smith:

  1. Leave the call center app
  2. Go into Outlook
  3. The next step involves sending a secure email to Mrs. Smith. A separate system is used to send an encrypted email, and including “Secure” in the subject line, triggers the encryption
  4. Send the email to Mrs. Smith
  5. The encrypted email sent to Mrs. Smith includes a link to the secure portal

That’s a long list, and a significant gear switch in the agent’s workflow. But Mrs. Smith also has a few steps to follow:

  1. Upon opening the email, Mrs. Smith needs to click the link to the new portal and create an account
  2. The account setup includes a username and password, along with other registration information
  3. She then logs into the portal
  4. After logging in, Mrs. Smith navigates an unfamiliar portal
  5. Mrs. Smith starts questioning her entire existence, and every decision she has ever made
  6. Mrs. Smith then uploads and submits the information, then logs out

But life happens. In Mrs. Smith’s case, let’s say the phone rang after she sent her information, and she needed to take this call.  After hanging up, Mrs. Smith calls the insurance company to say, I’ve sent my information, please let me know the status of my inquiry. But Agent A is not available, and Agent B is now taking the call. Because Agent B does not have access to the encrypted call notes and communications, the entire process must start all over again.

All Mrs. Smith needed was an answer to a question, and is not what you would call “happy.” Agent B is confronted with a frustrated customer and wants to help, but has no access to the encrypted communications or encrypted records.

After implementing DataMotion’s secure message center, this is what this process looks like:

  1. Mrs. Smith logs into the company’s standard customer portal using her regular credentials
  2. Mrs. Smith uploads her information and clicks submit
  3. Mrs. Smith is done, eliminating a potential existential crisis

The process has been considerably streamlined for everyone involved. The secure message storage repository allows other agents access to see where a previous agent left off. Creating a simple, seamless experience and cutting down on the time it takes to submit and resolve issues has led to much better internal efficiency and improved customer satisfaction.

A Wealth of Customer Experience Opportunities

A wealth management company was using a traditional secure exchange solution. But clients were becoming increasingly tired of having to log into a third-party portal rather than the company’s native customer portal. Customers complained about additional steps, as well as forgetting the username and password that were required. The firm tried new solutions, including redesigning their own secure message and document exchange functions. But the company was clear, as discussed in part one of this series–they are not software developers.  They want to focus on their core competencies and did not want to apply the resources to develop this type of application.

DataMotion was able to meet the company in this use case’s needs by integrating the secure message center into their existing workflow. During the initial discussion, we walked the firm through our basic, secure email functionality and talked about SafeTLS. (In case you’re not familiar with SafeTLS: remember our wealth management client in part one of this series, who sent and received messages through a highly-secure tube system? SafeTLS is basically this, and established email encryption from the advisor’s email server to clients for back-and-forth discussion.)

While many customers requested not to use the unfamiliar portal, others were fine with it, but wanted an easier process. We were able to accommodate this by integrating the third-party portal with the firm’s single sign-on (SSO). When clients log in, they only need the credentials they use on the firm’s website.

For this firm, flexibility was essential. While the secure message center will accommodate a company’s existing workflow, in this case, the firm did make a few changes, and dropped a couple of applications. In addition to a simpler process for customers, one key element was that customers and advisors alike could now send much larger messages than before, as they were previously limited in this capacity.

Merging Security, Compliance and Ease

Mergers and acquisitions involve more than creating a new company letterhead and business cards. There are internal adjustments to be made—including integrating different systems. The challenges in the next secure message center use case involve implementing a smoother, more efficient secure communications flow for clients and CSRs (customer service reps) and accommodating the secure communication needs for over a dozen departments, bringing them all into compliance.

The company is a public consumer finance company (read: a highly regulated sector). Like many companies in this vertical, our client had a self-service customer portal. While customers could access general account information via the portal, there were no secure exchange capabilities.

As mentioned above, there were over a dozen departments of varying sizes using disparate systems from multiple vendors to communicate with clients. This hodgepodge of disconnected systems could not “talk” to one another and needed a central hub to uniformly secure and track each transmission for compliance. As a result, the customer experience looked a little something like this:

  • Customer inquires about status of loan application, and needs to provide sensitive information
  • CSRs must obtain permission to respond to the inquiry, as there is sensitive information involved. This is a long and arduous process—if they cannot send secure messages today, they needed to speak to the security team. Then, the CSR must speak to numerous individuals to request and obtain licenses for a secure inbox, change orders, inbox requests, FTP access, creation and exchange for new credentials, etc.
  • Because of disconnected systems between departments and the number of hoops to jump through and approvals needed, permission could take up to two weeks
  • Customers could therefore wait weeks for a response
  • Nobody was happy. Nobody.

Staying both compliant and efficient was an ongoing burden for the InfoSec team. They needed a cost-effective solution to connect departments while keeping the same workflow and allowing secure exchange with customers. DataMotion worked with the company and took a “fit for purpose” approach, meaning that they could integrate security into their existing systems rather than dismantle the infrastructure. Both customers and staff can continue to communicate in the environments familiar to them, but cut down on response times while keeping information secure, and staying within regulatory compliance.

Securing a Compliant, Simple Experience

To sum up: if your organization is in a regulated industry, compliance is the order of the day. But it doesn’t have to trump the customer experience, nor does it have to create inefficiencies in internal workflows. DataMotion’s secure message center helps you stay compliant and efficient, giving your customers an easy, seamless experience.

We’ve talked about the secure message center’s role in helping regulated organizations remain within compliance but that is not the only reason to consider implementation. In my next series installment, we’ll take a look at some other secure message center use cases where the solution benefits your organization, whether or not bound by regulatory compliance. In the meantime, if you would like to learn more about this and DataMotion’s other solutions, please reach out to me, or to our larger team of experts. We are always happy to assist!

Be Sure To Read the Other Parts of This Series:
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GitHub Enrichment: 4 Tips for Efficiency and Security 736 312 Team DataMotion

GitHub Enrichment: 4 Tips for Efficiency and Security

The GitHub platform is used by over 52,000 companies worldwide, including Team DataMotion. Why, you might ask? Because GitHub’s source code management and version control functionalities make it super-easy to add and contribute to your projects. For developers working in a group and sharing responsibilities, it’s essential to push code changes quickly and efficiently. As we know all too well, delays can have a ripple effect as others on the project may need your work to be completed before moving forward.

By enhancing your version control knowledge, you can quickly add new features and bug fixes to a project and avoid these slowdowns. In addition to efficiency, by building your GitHub knowledge you can take the incentive to ensure there are other controls in place on your repositories, such as security policies and safety nets. With cybercrime and insider threats on the rise, DataMotion and many other large corporations consider these security features to be essential for any GitHub repository.

Four More Tips to Improve Your GitHub Experience

To help you build this knowledge, the development team here at DataMotion has put together a list of tips and tricks to help you utilize GitHub to its fullest potential. If you are just joining in, this blog post is the second in a two-part series summarizing the tips we’ve shared over social media. You can find a quick GitHub overview, as well as the first of the series of tips and tricks, in our first blog post.

These tips are intended to enhance an already-basic knowledge of the GitHub platform, but for those of you who are still pretty new to GitHub and would like more information on how to get started, we recommend you visit their quick start guide. Otherwise, let’s continue and review four new GitHub tips that will help secure your repositories, increase efficiency, and enhance collaboration.

GitHub Tip #5 – Limit Repo Access

The fifth tip in our series is to limit who has access to your repositories. Limiting who has access is an important security strategy known as a Least Privilege Model (LPM) implementation. In essence, you are allowing only those who need access to the repository to have that access and therefore are cutting down the possibility of an insider threat.

The first step is to ensure the visibility of the repository is set to private, rather than the public setting that grants everyone access by default. To do this, navigate to the repository you would like locked down. Once on the repository, select “Settings” then scroll to the bottom of the screen where you will find a “Danger Zone” section. In this section, select “Change Visibility” and choose the “Make Private” option.

Once your repository is private, you will be the only user with access. From here, you will want to assess who on your team should also have it, then make them a contributor. You can do this by scrolling to the top of “Settings” and choose “Manage Access” on the left-hand side menu. A new page will display; in the page select the green “Add People” button within the manage access section.

To limit who has access to and to secure your repositories, go to your GitHub profile settings. Then manage access. Then click the "Add People" button

From here, you can search for the persons you would like to have access and contribute to your project.

Now only those who need access to your project will have it, reducing the chance of an insider threat.

GitHub Tip #6 – Scan Your Code

Continuing with security and efficiency in mind, our next tip is to scan your code once it is added to your GitHub repository. You can utilize CodeQL (or another third-party tool from the marketplace) to set up code scanning. This means CodeQL or another third-party scanning software program will crawl your code and identify errors or possible vulnerabilities within your code once it is pushed to GitHub. Note: CodeQL does have compatibility with VSCode as well.

When using CodeQL, these vulnerabilities and errors are found using queries. You can utilize queries created by GitHub and community contributors or create your own to use during these scans. Scans may identify errors in data flow, structure, and syntax. Custom queries can be used to search for errors unique to your organization, such as a query that may search for instances of a deprecated company URL. Searching for these vulnerabilities will keep your code clean and help thwart attacks in the future.

GitHub Tip #7 – Scan for Secrets

In addition to scanning for vulnerabilities, you can tighten security by scanning for secrets as well. To configure this setting within GitHub, navigate to your repository and select “Settings” followed by “Security and analysis”. Then, next to “Secret scanning” click “Enable”.

Doing so will ensure that no sensitive tokens or private keys that may grant permissions are pushed to your current repository. Therefore, you can ensure that sensitive data, as well as permissions, stay locked down.

Quick Note: This feature is automatically enabled for all public repositories (thankfully!). For private repos, you will need an advanced security license to enable this feature.

GitHub Tip #8 – Compare Repo Versions

While developing and continuously pushing project changes, you may find that you need to look at changes on a specific branch of your repository and compare it to the main branch. Therefore, our last GitHub tip in the series is how to efficiently do this from the version control platform.

To compare repository changes with another branch, add “/compare/branch1..branch2” to your repo path. For example, you can navigate to github.com/HeatherPost/GitHubTesting to see our latest repository. Then navigate to github.com/HeatherPost/GitHubTesting/compare/main..TestBranch to see the changes made on our test branch.

There is also the ability to compare two commits as well. To do this, use two dots to separate the version numbers. For example to compare commitA and commitB you would navigate to github.com/HeatherPost/GitHubTesting/compare/commitA..commitB.

Final Thoughts

Congratulations! You are on your way to becoming a GitHub master. With these tips and your new skills, you can now add security and efficiency features to your GitHub repositories and code. As a final tip, we recommend trying each of these suggestions out on a test repository before implementing in your current and future projects.  Once you’ve had a chance to test drive these tips for yourself, you will be ready to go!

We’ll be back soon with the next series of tips and tricks, which are all geared toward enhancing and broadening your skillset. These will be posted on DataMotion’s Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages every Tuesday. As always, we will be sure to summarize each set of tips in an easy and convenient blog post. Keep an eye out!

You can find DataMotion’s open-source projects, Postman collections and libraries on our GitHub. To find out more on how our secure message APIs can help you, visit datamotion.com today!

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Four New Year’s Resolutions to Become a Better Developer 732 312 Team DataMotion

Four New Year’s Resolutions to Become a Better Developer

Many see the start of a new year as a life.restart(); execution, and a time to create new habits that will bring success. With this in mind, I created four New Year’s resolutions that will help you build great habits, stay organized and become a better developer in 2022. Some are habits that I have found to be extremely helpful in my career, and others are suggestions from our engineers here at DataMotion that, for them, have made all the difference. To help these resolutions survive past January, I will also provide you with some helpful tips on how to achieve each below.

These timeless New Year’s resolutions will help you build your skills, career, and gain a work-life balance. Get your champagne ready because we’re going to ring in a new year full of success and achievements!

Let’s dive in.

2022 Resolution #1: Expand Your Knowledge

My first recommended New Year’s resolution is to take time to explore and develop skills in a new side of the technology field. For example, if programming is where you’re most resourceful, you may want to expand your knowledge and skill set in networking or operations. Expanding your knowledge provides a bigger picture on how your software will work in the grand scheme of things. Making a habit of expanding your knowledge and skill set will also make you a better, more marketable developer and allow you to become more resourceful in your current position.

If you’re still starting out in the programming world, you might want to take another step towards becoming a full stack developer. This doesn’t mean you have to choose a full stack role going forward, but this will give you flexibility in your current position as well as in future endeavors. For instance, if your current forte is front-end development, learning back-end development can be extremely useful. Understanding back-end development will again give you insight into how your DOM objects are being used. Doing so will also allow you to make your front-end work exactly as you have imagined as you will have control over how front-end objects are manipulated.

To help acquire new knowledge and skills, you can find courses on Udemy, Coursera, and YouTube. You can also find a wide array of blog posts online. Some courses might be a paid venture, but there are many free online alternatives. I am personally a big fan of w3schools.com, developer.mozilla.org and, of course, StackOverflow.

2022 Resolution #2: Personal Projects

Once you have learned a new skill or two, repetition and cycles will become your best friend. There are unfortunately no short cuts (I’ve checked!), and good, old-fashioned practice is the only way to improve your development skills and create mental “muscle” memory. A great way to practice a skill is through my second New Year’s resolution recommendation: get to work on some personal projects.

Meme of man reading a book about how to develop a new skill. Book reads "practice. practice. practice."

In order for these skills to truly become part of your arsenal, practice is critical. But your college course, work project, or personal business activities might not quite align with your new learnings. Therefore, you may need to create a project of your own to hone your newly-acquired skills.

Where to start? Your personal project could be something as simple as creating a personal portfolio with the new JavaScript framework you just learned. Perhaps you create an app to help automate some of your manual tasks. Another option is to create a pseudo-demonstration project, which has no other benefit aside from helping you practice.

These personal projects don’t have to be something you solely own, either. If you are learning back-end development, for example, find an open-source project where back-end development is needed. You might also consider taking a freelance position where you get to practice these skills. That said, I recommend these two options when you are more confident in your new skills but need repetition to stay sharp.

2022 Resolution #3: Build your Network

Developers often shy away from networking. It’s just a fact of life. But this is an extremely important skill to have, especially in the programming world, and is therefore my third recommended New Year’s resolution. Networking is an excellent way to gain career advice, learn of new developer events and industry news, and gain professional support. For example, if you are stuck on a project, it can be very helpful to have someone knowledgeable in the field to turn to. They may have run into the problem in the past, and unlike a stranger on StackOverflow, they may be willing to jump on a call to help walk you through a solution.

There are a number of options for networking with fellow developers. LinkedIn, of course, is a great place to network. There are also Discord and Reddit groups you can join. I also strongly recommend attending meet-ups, whether in person or virtually. I have personally found a ton of great groups to network in through meetup.com! Groups tend to meet on a timed interval (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) to discuss a specific topic, or to work on a new development skill together. Making a habit of using these avenues to grow your network will help you expand your knowledge, gain, and refine new skills, and stay up to date on new technologies, malwares/threats, and job listings.

2022 Resolution #4: Know When to Step Away

Now the hardest resolution of all: knowing when to step away. I acknowledge this blog post has now asked you to take time to expand your knowledge, dedicate cycles to practicing new skills, and put in time to network, all on top of your current job and everyday life activities. But lighting the fire under your professional life can lead to burnout, which begs the question: when in the heck are you supposed to take a break?

This answer depends on you and your unique situation. For example, if you have a lighter workload at the moment but your personal life is busy, you may still need to take a break and focus on yourself. If your workload is becoming too much, a week away from these resolutions might be exactly what you need. I personally like to work in intervals, followed by a few days to myself. I find this gives me a great balance. You may need to do some trials to find a system that works best for you. You can also talk to a mentor or professional to help find the right system for you. Working to find this balance however is the key to staying consistent and sticking to your goals!

Here’s To 2022!

Well, there you have it! Four ideas for New Year’s resolutions to help you improve your development skills and gain success in 2022. Hopefully these resolutions will become habits that stay with you moving forward all year.

Be sure to follow DataMotion on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to learn about new features and products as well as find developer tips every Tuesday! We will be adding a new open-source project to our GitHub account this 2022 and would love for your contributions.

If security is already part of your 2022 resolution list, be sure to sign up for a free trial today!

Happy New Year!

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VxRM: Easily Collect and Report Employee COVID-19 Data 736 312 Team DataMotion

VxRM: Easily Collect and Report Employee COVID-19 Data

Despite COVID-19 and its variants still looming large in our daily lives, vaccines and other preventative measures have allowed many workplaces to return to some semblance of normalcy. As part of their reopening efforts (whether a hybrid or full return) businesses are implementing their own COVID-19 vaccination and/or testing requirements, similar to city, state and federal mandates. The goal of doing so is twofold. First, employers want to support a healthy environment as they seek to conduct business in the physical workplace. Second, they must be prepared to meet outside mandates if/when they become required.

Understanding the necessary elements for a safe return is only the first step. Executing a self-enforced vaccine directive while staying compliant with related, long-existing federal mandates (think HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, etc.) is the real challenge.

DataMotion recognized this and quickly pivoted to create a solution. Using our existing secure message delivery API, our engineers developed the VxRM platform to make the collection of employees’ COVID-19 vaccination status and test result data efficient and easy, while helping organizations report on regulatory compliance.

The VxRM Platform: The Basics

DataMotion’s VxRM platform is designed to help organizations securely, compliantly, and efficiently collect employee COVID-19 data including vaccination records, exemption requests, and test results. Once submitted, these responses are encrypted during transit over a secure channel and stored in a zero-trust, governed database. With this scalable and secure database hosting the personal health information, admins can quickly search and sort through employee responses, then filter and report on the information provided. These security measures help ensure your organization meets government compliance regulations while your data is in transit and in storage on the VxRM platform.

The VxRM platform consists of two corresponding parts: the employee app and the administrator dashboard. In the employee-facing application, employees will provide vaccination records or test result data. Once submitted, this information can then be reviewed, reported upon and monitored within the admin dashboard. We’ll speak a little more to each element below.

The Employee-Facing App

The employee side of VxRM consists of a mobile-friendly web application. Employees can access the app once they receive an email (which is sent through the administrator dashboard) containing a link to the employee application.

Within the application, employees can report a vaccine dose, report a COVID-19 test, or request an exemption. Depending on which action is selected, users will be prompted to provide additional information such as a vaccine date or test type. They can upload images of their vaccine record as well.

The Administrator Dashboard

The administrator dashboard can be found on the DataMotion portal. This is where admins can configure their company settings, add or upload the list of employees required to provide their vaccination status, and even cobrand the employee app. Once employees submit their responses, the administrator dashboard can be used to quickly search and sort through the submitted data as well as report and analyze their company’s general COVID-19 vaccination status. These reports and analyses can then be exported into a CSV and passed along to meet regulatory compliance.

Agility and Flexibility

The DataMotion team designed the VxRM platform to be agile and adaptable to your organization’s unique needs. For instance, you may want your employees to be tested on a weekly, rather than bi-weekly, basis. This is configurable with the admin dashboard, allowing flexibility for organizations to customize their unique requirements and ensure company policies are being enforced.

As we move forward, new requirements and options are expected. For example, booster shots may be required in the coming months for people to be considered fully vaccinated by the CDC. As new medicines are developed, companies may want to examine how those with positive COVID-19 test results are treating their illness in order to determine the length of time before an employee can return to work. With these possibilities in mind, the VxRM platform’s flexible and agile design will allow us to quickly update and add new features as mandates and requirements continue to change.

Key Takeaways

Normalcy, or something similar, comes with a price. To accommodate a return to the office in a safe and compliant manner, companies across industries are moving forward with vaccination requirements of their own. As they do so, the DataMotion VxRM platform will ensure that organizational and/or government mandates are compliantly fulfilled while avoiding logistical slow-downs.

To sum up, the VxRM Platform:

  • Contains an easy-to-use, mobile-friendly, cobranded web application where employees can quickly upload their vaccination status and test results.
  • Securely collects and stores sensitive PII and PHI data, helping your organization stay within regulatory compliance.
  • Allows administrators to easily search and sort through as well as report on submitted responses to ensure your employees can safely come to the office.

In our next post, we will review the ins and outs of the VxRM platform and give a functionality overview. For further information, we invite you to visit our VxRM site or review our Employee Guide for Using the DataMotion VxRM and Admin Guide to Configuring the VxRM Application for more information and step-by-step guidance on successfully utilizing our platform. If you have any additional questions, stop by our documentations page or contact our sales team today.

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The DataMotion 2021 Year-end Hot List, Part 2: Editor’s Picks 732 312 Team DataMotion

The DataMotion 2021 Year-end Hot List, Part 2: Editor’s Picks

Welcome to part two of DataMotion’s 2021 Year-end Hot List! In part one, we reflected on various collections that were published to the DataMotion Blog, including the Danger for Data series and a look at the rise of Ransomware as a Service. In this installment, we’re sharing a list of notable entries from 2021 including things to consider before developing software in-house, a checklist for vetting API companies, and takeaways from industry events.

Let’s dive in.

What You May Have Missed in 2021

Choosing an API Company: 14 Points for Due Diligence When considering an API company, you’ll want to do your diligence. In this post, DataMotion Vice President of Products and Services Alex Mushkin shares a checklist to use as part of the vetting process, covering factors such as security, benefits offered, and technical depth.

DataMotion: A Zero Trust Model You Can Trust “Trust but verify relies on a strong defense, vetting then trusting people and systems. Zero trust is an internal strategy, focusing on hypervigilance around not only system security compliance, but access. Here at DataMotion, we abide by both.” DataMotion CEO Bob Janacek speaks to the zero-trust security model, how it keeps DataMotion’s customers safe, and its benefits to your organization.

5 Things to Consider Before Developing Software In-house Whether or not to develop in-house solutions is a question that almost every enterprise asks at some point. The do-it-yourself approach can offer tremendous benefits, but there is often tremendous costs and additional, unplanned work involved. DataMotion Developer Advocate Heather Post examines this question and offers a list of points to consider before starting an in-house project.

Flexibility, Ease, Security and Compliance: Meet DataMotion’s Secure Message Center “While the secure message center can include email communications, it is really a solution to keep all of your communication tools, including email, customer apps and portals, in one place for simple, secure and compliant communications.” If modernizing customer experience and internal workflows are part of your 2022 resolutions, you are in luck! Christian Grunkemeyer, DataMotion’s Director of Sales Success talks about our secure message center, some general use cases, its impact on the customer experience and internal workflows, and how this solution can benefit organizations across industries.

2021 In Events

Team DataMotion attended several industry events this year, both virtually and in person. Below are the post-event blog entries from healthcare and insurtech events, where Christian Grunkemeyer and DataMotion Business Development Director, Healthcare, Doug Rubino shared industry trends, hot topics, and general event takeaways.

Directly Speaking: The 2021 DirectTrust™ Summit “We want a patient, no matter where they are receiving care, to have that doctor immediately be able to pull their medical records from another care provider or organization with the same ease that the patient withdrew money from another bank’s ATM that morning for their coffee shop run.” We sat down with Doug Rubino to discuss takeaways from June’s DirectTrust™ Summit, including challenges faced with healthcare directories and what’s next for the industry.

HIMSS 2021 Takeaways: Healthcare, Cybersecurity and Interoperability “Many organizations have a marked lack of internal expertise and knowledge of internal network schematics and topology. This…boils down to a general failure to understand where system vulnerabilities exist, which ultimately leads to the inability to anticipate and identify cybersecurity threats, and to prevent an attack.” Once again, Doug Rubino shared his insights and takeaways from HIMSS 2021. Event discussions included challenges and innovations around cybersecurity in healthcare.

Ensuring Secure and Compliant Exchange for Insurance: ITC 2021 “To sum up, organizations in the space are looking for AI-driven technologies, multiple integration options, and technological methods to automate internal processes and better detect, and prevent, fraud.” In this interview, Christian Grunkemeyer shared hot topics and takeaways from ITC 2021, including improving the insurance policyholder digital experience and the current state of technology at insurance companies.

On behalf of everyone at Team DataMotion, we’d like to thank you for a wonderful 2021, and wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2022! We’re looking forward to another great year in the DataMotion Blog and we hope you can join us. If you have some downtime during the holiday break, please take a minute to follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Finally, stay in the know in 2022 and subscribe to the DataMotion newsletter, which delivers industry insights and thought leadership to your inbox once a month.

Thanks again for a great year—we’ll see you in 2022!

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The DataMotion 2021 Year-end Hot List, Part 1: A Year of Collections 736 312 Team DataMotion

The DataMotion 2021 Year-end Hot List, Part 1: A Year of Collections

Welcome to the first installment of the DataMotion 2021 Year-end Hot List! As we close out 2021 and gear up for 2022, we’re revisiting the year in the DataMotion Blog. In this blog post, we are showcasing the different series that we’ve published to the blog this year. This includes a look at where data security vulnerabilities may lie within your organization on both the IT and business sides, the rise of Ransomware as a Service, and some tips and tricks for using Postman.

Let’s set the rearview mirror and start our look back at 2021 in the DataMotion Blog.

Series You May Have Missed

The Danger for Data Series

“While not every breach will make front page headlines or the 24-hour cable news cycle, organizations should expect a breach at some point and plan a defensive strategy. As I mentioned in the previous installment of this series, it is not a question of if a breach will occur, but rather, where and when.” DataMotion CEO Bob Janacek offers insights into where vulnerabilities may lie on both the IT and business sides of an organization, and how you can protect your enterprise’s data.

Part One: 5 Back-end Breach Factors

Part Two: Seven Pain Points in Your Processes

Part Three: Remedies for Risk

The Rise of Ransomware as a Service

You’ve heard of Platform as a Service and Software as a Service. But Ransomware as a Service? You read this correctly. Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) is a dangerous cottage industry that has upped the ante when it comes to keeping your data secure. DataMotion Developer Advocate Heather Post explored this dark side to innovation in a three-part series, where she outlined the basics of this disastrous digital disruption, how your vendor could unintentionally put your organization’s data at risk, and how you can protect your enterprise. Read on:

The Rise of Ransomware as a Service

The Rise of RaaS: Consolidating the Vendor Risk Factor

The Rise of RaaS: The Real Cost of a Ransomware Attack

We’re Partial to Postman

This fall, we shared a social-media-based series of tips and tricks for using one of our favorite tools, Postman. Heather Post has curated these tips into two posts to the DataMotion Blog:

4 Tips for Becoming a Postman Guru

4 More Tips for Your Journey to Becoming a Postman API Guru

As part of this series, Heather also sat down with DataMotion Security Specialist Kevin Miller, who is an enthusiastic and expert user of Postman. In this interview, Kevin shared a little bit about his role, how he has utilized Postman as part of his job, and his tips for fellow developers on how to successfully leverage Postman for testing APIs.

Don’t Miss Out

In our next entry to the DataMotion Blog, we’ll continue our look back at 2021. We will be revisiting the zero-trust model, questions you should ask when vetting an API company, and takeaways from both virtual and live events.

In the meantime, stay up-to-date with industry insights and thought leadership, DataMotion updates and more by following us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. We also invite you to subscribe to the DataMotion newsletter to have all of the above delivered to your inbox once per month.

See you next week!

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The DataMotion November Hot List 736 312 Team DataMotion

The DataMotion November Hot List

Greetings, readers, and happy December! We hope that you have had a great start to the holiday season. In this month’s DataMotion Hot List, we’re going to cover posts to the DataMotion Blog during the month of November, which included an interview with a DataMotion Postman expert, and tips for using GitHub. We also shared an up-close-and-personal look at DataMotion’s secure message center—how it works, and how you can benefit from this solution.

And now, without further ado, we present the DataMotion November Hot List.

What You Should Have Been Reading

Flexibility, Ease, Security and Compliance: Meet DataMotion’s Secure Message Center “Unlike regular email, the sensitive data you are exchanging with your client is kept fully secure during transit, and the messages are stored just as securely…Also unlike regular email, this process integrates with your methods of customer communication, such as web and mobile applications and customer portals, delivering messages and documents just as quickly and securely.” The ability to securely send and store messages as part of an existing customer-facing workflow not only helps provide an outstanding customer experience, but can also help keep your organization within regulatory compliance. In this entry to the DataMotion Blog, DataMotion Director of Sales Success Christian Grunkemeyer shares a look at our secure message center, and how it can benefit your enterprise.

Meet Kevin Miller, DataMotion’s Postman Guru “The first tip I would recommend is utilizing variables. If you have to utilize the same information in multiple API calls, you can replace this information with a variable and define the value of that variable for an entire collection of calls.” As part of our Postman tips and tricks series, DataMotion Developer Advocate Heather Post interviewed Kevin Miller, DataMotion Security Specialist and resident Postman guru. In this interview, Kevin shared how he uses Postman, why it is helpful, and his tips on making the most of this tool.

Get Resourceful with GitHub: Four Tips for the Skilled Developer “Have you ever been asked to share your GitHub profile at a job interview, or when meeting other developers at a conference? With GitHub’s growing popularity, it’s now just as common for employers to request a GitHub profile as they would a LinkedIn profile. However, as great as the code hosting tool is for showboating talents, it does so much more.” In this entry to the DataMotion Blog, Heather Post provides a roundup of the first half of our GitHub tips and tricks series.

The October Hot List In case you missed it in October, we published a cybersecurity toolkit, takeaways from InsureTech Connect 2021, and part two of our Postman tips and tricks series.

News and Opinions from ‘Round the Web

As part of the monthly Hot List, we’re including a few cybersecurity-related news articles and opinions from around the web, including a look at new rules for rail transit, a cybersecurity incident notification law in Wisconsin, and an opinion piece on why cybersecurity pros need a seat at the table.

From CBS News: U.S. Imposes First Cybersecurity Rules for Rail Transit, Despite Industry Pushback

From Public: Wisconsin Enacts Insurance Data Security Law Requiring Notification of Cybersecurity Incidents to Insurance Commissioner Within Three Business Days

From Infosecurity Magazine: Cybersecurity Pros Need a Seat at the Table

Get Social with Us

Have YOU followed us social media? You’ll find our tips and tricks series, job openings, links to valuable content such as blog posts and whitepapers, as well as company and industry news and updates, and much more. Follow us today on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

Speaking of keeping up with updates and insights, we invite you to subscribe to our newsletter, which delivers industry trends, insights and thought leadership to your inbox once a month.

Finally, with the holidays upon us, the DataMotion Blog will have a hiatus the last week of December and the first week of January.  As we close out 2021 and gear up for 2022, we’ll revisit some of the hottest topics from the year, and we invite you to join us as we look back on this year’s thought leadership. We also invite you to learn more about DataMotion’s secure exchange solutions by visiting our website or contacting our team of experts.

We look forward to seeing you in December!

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Get Resourceful with GitHub: Four Tips for the Skilled Developer 736 312 Team DataMotion

Get Resourceful with GitHub: Four Tips for the Skilled Developer

Have you ever been asked to share your GitHub profile at a job interview, or when meeting other developers at a conference? Doing so is an easy way to share your work and experience with others. With GitHub’s growing popularity, it’s now just as common for employers to request a GitHub profile as they would a LinkedIn profile. However, as great as the code hosting tool is for showboating talents, it does so much more. 

GitHub’s primary functions provide version control using Git and Internet hosting for web applications. As the platform continues to grow, new features are developed to enhance the primary functions and the development process as a whole. Understanding the magnitude of GitHub’s benefits, and how to use it to its fullest ability, will help advance your team’s productivity (as well as your career path).

Four Tips to Improve Your GitHub Experience

Over the past few weeks, our dev team has provided GitHub tips and tricks on DataMotion’s Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts to help users better utilize this version control tool. Below are the four tips we have provided to date, aggregated into a blog post for easy, convenient review.  

We created these tips to enhance an already-basic knowledge of the GitHub platform, but for those of you who are still pretty new to GitHub and would like more information on how to get started, visit their quick start guide.

GitHub Tip #1

Just as developers can showcase their software projects on GitHub, the GitHub Gist feature allows developers to easily display snippets of code as well. The gists are hosted on GitHub as any other repository would be and can be found on one’s GitHub profile. 

Gists can be used to share data and snippets of code through a URL or embed them into your webpages as I have below. By adding a quick source tag to our HTML, I was able to embed an example gist I created to this blog. 

This feature allowed me to easily provide the formatted code needed to get a DataMotion session key now without having to link to a full GitHub repo. Gists can be extremely useful when building documentation pages, how-to guides and, of course, technical blogs.

GitHub Tip #2

When collaborating on a project, you may want to fork a repository and push your changes to the main repo when you’re ready to contribute. This is a helpful strategy, but requires continuous pulling of the changes your partners push to the main project to ensure you are working with the latest code. Thankfully, GitHub makes it easy to know when you need to fetch these changes. 

Once your project is forked, make sure to enable the “Watch” feature on the main repository. By doing so, GitHub will notify you when a fetch is required. To do so, navigate to the main repository, select the watch button in the top right corner of the page, and choose your desired option!

To enable the "watch" feature on the main repository, click "watch" in the top right corner of the page and choose either "participating and @mentions," "all activity," "ignore," or "custom."

GitHub Tip #3

When collaborating on a development project, you can keep track of tasks by assigning bugs and feature requests with GitHub’s “Issues.” This feature allows users to create issues, which outline the different tasks that must be accomplished in order to complete a project. Developers can link to the issue in their push and pull requests in order to keep track of the issue’s progress. 

This adds issue tracking functionality on top of version control which helps further organize the development process. To get started, navigate to your project’s repository, select “Issues” at the top of the page followed by the “New Issue” button. From here, you can start filling out the details.

To create an "issue" select "issues" at the top of the page, then "new issue," then fill out the details when prompted

GitHub Tip #4

Now that we understand how the ‘Issues’ feature works, I’ll expand upon it. Developers may have a list of smaller tasks that need to be completed for one larger feature to be accomplished. To keep track of progress on a group of issues, utilize GitHub’s Milestones. 

The Milestones feature allows you to prioritize tasks and monitor which issues are completed and which are still open. You can also add a due date to each milestone to help better plan releases and keep to a specified development timeline. 

You can find more information on milestones within GitHub’s documentation. 

Key Takeaways

GitHub is an excellent tool for showcasing hosted code, but you can now see just how much more it has to offer. With the four tips reviewed today, you can enhance your development process and streamline collaboration by: 

  • Utilizing GitHub gists to share and display snippets of code
  • Ensuring you are notified when you must fetch upstream from a forked project 
  • Keeping track of bugs and feature requests with GitHub’s Issues
  • Using Milestones in order to group and prioritize various Issues

In the coming several weeks, every Tuesday, we will provide additional GitHub tips on DataMotion’s Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. In the meantime, be sure to check out DataMotion’s GitHub profile to find our projects and development resources. To learn more about DataMotion and our products, visit our documentation site or contact our team of experts. 

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Flexibility, Ease, Security and Compliance: Meet DataMotion’s Secure Message Center 735 313 Christian Grunkemeyer

Flexibility, Ease, Security and Compliance: Meet DataMotion’s Secure Message Center

Picture this:

You are a wealth manager. One of your clients wants to send you the details of an investment opportunity their brother-in-law shared at last weekend’s get-together. Rather than mail these documents, send them by courier, or bring them physically to your office, the client opens a heavily-fortified safe (with your branding) right in front of their desk. They drop the documents in, closing the safe’s door securely with a satisfying click. These documents are then transported via a thick, impenetrable vacuum tube directly to you and your team. Once the documents arrive in your own fortified safe, you may access these and previous exchanges that also live in this safe to inform your comments. You then send your reply and information via the secure tube system back to your client’s safe, where they can pick up the discussion.

Your client has just had an incredibly easy experience securely sending sensitive information from a place that is convenient for them, and can access messages in a place that is equally convenient and secure. No one in your firm has had to adjust their workflow for this secure exchange. This process, while perhaps sounding suspiciously like regular email, is markedly different. Unlike regular email, the sensitive data you are exchanging with your client is kept fully secure during transit, and the messages are stored just as securely, helping to keep your firm within regulatory compliance. Also, unlike regular email, this process integrates with your methods of customer communication, such as web and mobile applications and customer portals, delivering messages and documents just as quickly and securely.

Welcome to the principle behind DataMotion’s secure message center.

In this installment of the “Meet the Secure Message Center” series, we’ll give you the basics of the secure message center. In later installments, we’ll help you get further acquainted by discussing use cases and covering some questions you may have.

What is the Secure Message Center and How Does it Work?

The DataMotion secure message center is a highly secure, versatile, and integrable communications solution that connects back-end systems, such as email, case management, and call and help centers, to your client-facing apps (mobile and web) and customer portals. The secure message center can be part of an omnichannel approach, or a standalone solution.

How does it work? Let’s re-visit our wealth management client. Rather than a branded safe in their wall right in front of them, the client can go to the firm’s website, and log into the customer-facing portal as usual. From there, they can create a message (which might include information such as account or Social Security numbers), attach their documents, and send. The message is encrypted while in transit, and arrives at a secure inbox. The intended recipients and other authorized viewers, such as help center staff,  may then review the documents and quickly respond. The client is alerted to the new message in the portal, and may access that and any other message they have exchanged with the advisor. Each exchange is also logged and tracked, which can help with proving compliance.

Why Should I Implement the Secure Message Center?

“We’re not software developers.”

This is something we hear from folks across industries who are seeking to implement secure communications. Securely sharing sensitive data while remaining within regulatory compliance is a common pain point, and your enterprise should not have to develop its own solution. In order to include security into customer exchanges, companies will often turn to additional software, both from in-house development and third-party vendors, which often include additional steps, to the workflow, interfering with internal efficiency and the customer experience.  For instance, what could be a simple inquiry via a company’s customer portal turns into a customer rep having to send the customer an email with a link to a third-party portal, using “Secure” in the subject line. The customer must then wait for the email, then click the link, create a username and password, then navigate an unfamiliar portal and send information.

This doesn’t sound very efficient or customer-friendly, does it? But it happens.

DataMotion’s secure message center eliminates the need to develop new solutions, or to remove or change your current systems. Along these lines, the secure message center also eliminates many of the steps we’ve listed above. This is because the secure message center is integrable with your existing workflow, allowing contact center reps to work in their regular environment, while delivering security and simplifying the customer experience.

Finally, let’s talk security. Founded in 1999, DataMotion has over 20 years of experience in providing secure digital platforms for organizations in regulated industries. With this amount of experience and knowledge of use cases, we have developed strong security coding and protocols to keep your customer and patient data safe. Here are a few elements of our security:

  • Military-grade encryption
  • A zero-trust, governed database
  • Verifiable Compliance: HIPAA, HITECH, FFIEC, NYDFS, FRB, GLBA

In short, the collective “why” is that the secure message center provides strong security, can be fully integrated with your existing systems, helps your organization stay compliant with regulations, and offers ease of use for both your customers and staff.

Who Should Implement the Secure Message Center?

Any enterprise can benefit from using the secure message center, particularly organizations in regulated industries. But security isn’t just about compliance. Your company might need to send proprietary product design information. You might also need a secure way for a news source, or a whistleblower, to contact you. Below is a quick, but not exhaustive, list of organizations that must ensure secure, encrypted communications:

  • Organizations within the healthcare ecosystem, including vendors, providers, and payers
  • Wealth management firms
  • Insurance companies
  • Banks, both investment and retail
  • Media organizations
  • Manufacturing companies
  • State, local and municipal organizations, including protective services, law enforcement, and others
  • Law firms

In the next installment in this series, we’ll discuss this further, diving into some use cases.

Key Takeaways

You’ve now met DataMotion’s secure message center–a flexible, secure digital platform that allows organizations in any industry to easily, securely and compliantly communicate with their patients, clients and customers. While the secure message center can include email communications, it is really a solution to keep all of your communication tools, including email, customer apps and portals, in one place for simple, secure and compliant communications. Here is a quick review of the basics:

  • Frictionless Customer Experience Enables secure communications as part of your existing customer-facing portal and/or web and mobile applications. No need for customers to go to a third-party portal for secure messaging.
  • Increased Efficiency Contact center reps can access previous customer messages and, without gathering physical documents or going through additional security steps, can quickly and securely respond to inquiries.
  • Versatile and Integrable The secure message center can seamlessly integrate with, and securely connect, back-end systems, including email, contact centers, case management, etc.

Features

  • Ironclad Security DataMotion uses a zero-trust, governed database and military-grade encryption, helping to keep data secure and your organization compliant.
  • Ease of Use The secure message center enables single sign on for customers, eliminating additional passwords. It also works with your current workflow–there is no need to retrain staff.
  • Co-branded Portal The secure message center is customizable for your logo, colors and branding.
  • Tracking Every message and document are logged and tracked, with reporting available.

As we mentioned above, in the next installment of this series, we’ll take a closer look at customer use cases, and how this solution can benefit your enterprise. If you have questions about the secure message center and how it can benefit your organization, or would like to learn more about DataMotion and our larger digital platform, please reach out to our team of experts.

We also invite you to try out our capabilities by downloading DataMotion’s free mobile app, available in the Apple App store.

Be Sure To Read the Other Parts of This Series: