Purchasing laboratory management software may seem like the obvious fix for an institution’s productivity. Robust software that streamlines processes and improves workflow are highly valued and touted as a must-have for any organization with an animal research program. However, the work doesn’t end once the software is installed and users are trained. Over time, software …
The Importance of Regular Software Health Checks Read More »
If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that normal operations can be disrupted at any time to varying degrees as a result of completely unforeseeable or underestimated events. This is why animal care and use programs must have disaster and business continuity plans. But even the best-laid plans will never cover every scenario, …
For a system like Elements, ensuring that valid users only have access to the appropriate screens and data is a very important aspect of data security. People with access to someone else’s protocol or staff account (aka grant) would represent a considerable risk of deliberate or accidental meddling! “I’m sure Joe down the hall would …
Authentication is a fancy word for “logging in”. It describes the process whereby a user gets access into the application and is important for data security for a number of reasons: It prevents one authorized user from pretending to be someone else It allows various logging and audit trailing data to be retained, typing actions …
Encryption involves the “scrambling” or encoding of data so that it can only be read via the use of an encryption “key”. From our perspective, there are two flavors of encryption—encryption of the data streams and “encryption at rest”. Encryption of the data stream prevents “snoopers” from stealing data as it travels through the Internet. …
Data security within systems like Elements is a multi-faceted topic. When prospects or customers come to us with questions, the areas covered can include encryption, authentication, access control, e-signatures and audit trailing, physical security, and even disaster recovery. Such topics are not quite as newsworthy as spyware attacks on WhatsAPP, but are important to our …
The majority of TOPAZ customers have their AAALAC accreditations, and even of those that donot, most are working toward it. It is not unusual for us to have meetings andproject schedules pushed back by our dear clients due to “inspections” orAAALAC reports being due. We understand that achieving and maintaining youraccreditation is a non-trivial task, …
As described in previous blog posts, the TOPAZ Elements Biosafety Protocols module can make a significant contribution to your compliance activities, make life easier for your PIs, and remove communication friction within and between your compliance committees. To share these exciting opportunities with you, we’ll be hosting a webinar Wednesday, February 27th. During this webinar, we’ll …
The recently completed “Silverlight removal” for the protocols modules was a large project that we began in January of 2018. To ensure that we got off to a good start and achieved high velocity throughout the project, we engaged consultants from Modularis to augment our own in-house developers. This was also to ensure that we …
More on Silverlight: Risk Reduction and a New Feature Read More »
As many of our customers know, the current version of Elements makes use of the Microsoft Silverlight plugin. There is quite a story behind this choice of technology, a story that is now coming to an end as we prepare to release Elements 2019, which removes the need for Silverlight for the Protocols modules (with …
