QTS Realty Trust has joined RE100, a global corporate leadership initiative bringing together influential businesses committed to 100 percent renewable electricity, QTS announced on Thursday. RE100 is led by The Climate Group, in partnership with CDP. 

“For QTS, renewable energy is a very important part of our larger sustainability strategy documented in our recently published ESG Report,” said Travis Wright, vice president of Energy & Sustainability for QTS. “As one of the largest data center service providers, we are committed to lead the industry in minimizing carbon footprint, water reclamation, recycling and a variety of other important clean energy initiatives,” Wright added. 

Recently, QTS published the 2018 Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Initiatives Report to demonstrate the company’s commitment to procure 100 percent of power from renewable energy sources by 2025.

In addition, QTS has been ranked the fourth largest user of green power among data center companies by the EPA. The company has reused or recycled 550 million pounds of industrial materials to date, and reclaimed more than 30 million gallons of water and increased its water-use efficiency by 26 percent over the last two years. 

RE100’s purpose is to accelerate change towards zero carbon grids, at global scale. The initiative works to increase corporate demand for – and in turn supply of – renewable energy. To join RE100, companies must set a public goal to source 100% of its global electricity consumption from renewable sources by 2050 and disclose electricity data annually.

Sam Kimmins, Head of RE100, The Climate Group, said: “We are pleased to welcome QTS to RE100. With its Chicago, Piscataway and Irving data centers already running on 100% renewable electricity, and others in the works, QTS is demonstrating a focus on sustainable energy resources is good for business and leading the industry to a clean energy future.”

About QTS Realty Trust

QTS Realty Trust, Inc. is a leading provider of data center solutions across a diverse footprint spanning more than 6 million square feet of owned mega scale data center space throughout North America and Europe.

Through its software-defined technology platform, QTS is able to deliver secure, compliant infrastructure solutions, robust connectivity and premium customer service to leading hyperscale technology companies, enterprises, and government entities.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions announced the results of its online survey, in collaboration with the Information Security Media Group (ISMG), that investigated the cybersecurity trends in healthcare on Thursday. 

The results showed that 58 percent of people believe that the cybersecurity of their patient portal is above average compared to others. In addition, 93 percent use their username and password as their patient portal authentication method, and 65 percent report their individual state budgets or patient identity management won’t increase in 2019. 

The survey included responses from more than 100 participants from healthcare organizations (HCOs), including hospitals, physician group practices and payers in early 2019. The top three cybersecurity takeaways of the report are as follows:

• Traditional authentication methods are insufficient: As a result of many healthcare data breaches, hackers have access to legitimate credentials; users are also easily phished. Therefore, traditional username and password verification are considered an entry point, not a barrier, and alone cannot be relied upon to provide a confident level of security.

• Multifactor authentication should be considered a baseline best practice: HCOs should rely on a variety of controls, ranging from knowledge-based questions and verified one-time passwords to device analytics and biometrics to authenticate users based on the riskiness of the transaction. The more risky the access request is, the more stringent the authentication technique should be. 

• The balance between optimizing the user experience and protecting the data must be achieved in an effective cybersecurity strategy: HCOs need to make it easy for patients and partners to access records while ensuring adequate data protection. To do this, an HCO’s cybersecurity strategy should layer low to no-friction identity checks up front, making it easier for the right users to get through and layer more friction-producing identity checks on the back end that only users noted as suspicious would complete.

“There are some surprises in the results, particularly the higher than expected confidence that organizations have in regards to the security of their patient portal and telemedicine platforms given that only 65% deploy multifactor authentication,” said Erin Benson, director, market planning, Healthcare, LexisNexis Risk Solutions. 

“Multifactor authentication is considered a baseline recommendation by key cybersecurity guidelines. Every access point should have several layers of defense in case one of them doesn’t catch an instance of fraud. At the same time, the security framework should have low-friction options up front to maintain ease of access by legitimate users.”

About LexisNexis Risk Solutions 

LexisNexis Risk Solutions harnesses the power of data and advanced analytics to provide insights that help businesses and governmental entities reduce risk and improve decisions to benefit people around the globe. We provide data and technology solutions for a wide range of industries including insurance, financial services, healthcare and government.