In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Soter Technologies, known for its innovative solutions in environmental and social intelligence, took on the challenge to help mitigate the virus’s spread and aid the reopening of economies. They developed the Symptomsense™ Evaluation Gateway, a revolutionary non-evasive electronic full-body scanner that detects symptoms of COVID-19 in just 8 seconds. To realize this ambitious project, Soter Technologies partnered with Digital Alpha Ventures to create a robust and secure backend for the device in the cloud using Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The Challenge
As the pandemic intensified, it became clear that Symptomsense™ would be essential in offices, government buildings, and public spaces worldwide. However, Soter Technologies faced several critical issues: scalability, speed, volume, and the need to establish infrastructure across various regions while adhering to local regulatory guidelines. The company needed a solution that could support remote device monitoring, software updates, and customer-specific requirements for authentication, authorization, customization, and configuration.
The Solution
Soter Technologies leveraged Digital Alpha Ventures’ partnership with AWS to build a sophisticated backend infrastructure. AWS IAM was utilized to provide stringent policy control, ensuring data and privacy security at client, country, and regional levels in compliance with regulatory guidelines such as GIST and HIPAA in the US.
Using AWS ElasticBeanstalk, DynamoDB, Application Load Balancer, and Route53, the backend infrastructure was designed for rapid scalability and resilience. This setup supported a large volume of devices and could handle health data for various clients, countries, and regions with minimal configurational and policy adjustments. Symptomsense™ also featured capabilities for client audit, data residency, and versioning requirements, with automated segregation of workloads to ensure seamless operation.
Customer Benefits
The adoption of AWS allowed Soter to swiftly overcome the challenges presented by the pandemic. The cloud’s elastic nature enabled the rapid scaling of device rollout at an optimal cost. Regulatory requirements could be easily managed at both country and regional levels, and the consistency in configuration reduced errors.
Moreover, the infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach with Terraform streamlined the provisioning, changes, and versioning of the required backend AWS services. This method significantly accelerated cloud adoption and simplified the management of a vast IT infrastructure. Using Terraform and AWS CodePipeline, the setup of backend infrastructure was possible in mere minutes.
Soter Technologies placed a strong emphasis on data privacy and security. Symptomsense™ utilized SSL and TLS protocols for real-time data encryption. The data residency option empowered authorities to decide on data storage as per jurisdiction guidelines. Additionally, access to the collected data was securely governed at various levels using the Identity and Access Management (IAM) controls, restricting access to authorized entities only.
Conclusion
This collaboration between Soter Technologies and Digital Alpha Ventures, leveraging AWS, represents a significant advancement in the fight against COVID-19. It not only showcases the power of technological innovation in crisis response but also underscores the importance of strategic partnerships in bringing such innovations to fruition. Through this venture, Soter Technologies was able to deploy an effective solution rapidly, ensuring safety and aiding in the reopening of economies globally.