In v2026.1 we introduced support for a more robust and real-life secure authorization for your FHIR endpoints.

This is achieved by using SMART on FHIR v2 fine-grained scopes.

Focus - Not SMART in general, rather, the fine-grained scopes; Hands-on easy sample

1-) Introduction

This article reflects my recent experiences at trying to connect an IRIS Business Operation to a secure Kafka Server, using SSL tunnels to encrypt the communications and using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) password hashing with SCRAM-SHA-512.

Hi Community,

Enjoy the new video on InterSystems Developers YouTube:

⏯  Resilience by Design - Business Continuity Through Secure Backup @ Ready 2025

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Enjoy the new video on InterSystems Developers YouTube:

⏯ Operationalizing Cybersecurity - Making it Real and Relevant @ Ready 2025

Hi Community,

Enjoy the new video on InterSystems Developers YouTube:

⏯ Data on the Move - Securing InterSystems IRIS Connections with TLS @ Ready 2025

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Enjoy the new video on InterSystems Developers YouTube:

⏯  Ahead of the Threats - The Future of Secure Systems @ Ready 2025

SQL injection remains one of the most critical vulnerabilities in database-driven applications, allowing attackers to manipulate queries and potentially access or compromise sensitive data. In InterSystems IRIS, developers have access to both Dynamic SQL and Embedded SQL, each with distinct characteristics. Understanding how to use them securely is essential for preventing SQL injection.

The Problem: Dynamic SQL and SQL Injection

Dynamic SQL constructs queries as strings at runtime. While this offers flexibility, it also creates a vulnerability if user input is not handled correctly.

Hi, Community!

Do you need a way to securely manage your passwords, API keys, and other credentials? See how the Secure Wallet in InterSystems IRIS® data platform can help:

What Is the InterSystems Secure Wallet?

There is a Master Table within IRIS that I am populating from Epic but want to share it with our Enterprise Application Development Team (Web). As a test I was able to use _SYSTEM from postman to execute the following.

POST /api/atelier/v1/xxxx/action/query HTTP/1.1
Host: xxxxxxxx
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: ••••••
Cookie: CSPSESSIONID-SP-443-UP-api-atelier-=00f0000000000AKyLjBfUvU$MpFD8UT8y$EoNKNw1ixZeXN4_Q; CSPWSERVERID=hzZAT5rb
Content-Length: 86

{"query": "SELECT * FROM osuwmc_Epic_Clarity.DepartmentMaster WHERE ID = '300000000'"}

Also in previous versions you could define your FHIR Server to accept requests via OAuth 2.0 (e.g. for a SMART on FHIR client) but nowadays with v2024.3, which was released a while ago, there is a new feature, that enables doing this more easily - the OAuth FHIR Client QuickStart.

It was encouraging to see more people building VS Code extensions for the recent contest. However I noticed that of of the three extensions requiring credentials with which to make their connections only mine, gj :: dataLoader, leverages the long-established and officially-supported InterSystems Server Manager extension to obtain the connection definitions and to handle credentials securely.

InterSystems IRIS provides extensive configurable security options, yet many developers primarily use roles and resources to secure entire tables or routines. Today, we will delve deeper. We can also secure individual columns and rows separately, but these two mechanisms operate very differently. Let's begin with the columns.

Column Security

For testing and demonstration, we will keep our table structure concise and straightforward. We have a table called "Person" in the USER namespace that contains an ID column, a date of birth column (DOB), first name, and last name. 

Security is fundamental to enterprise application development. InterSystems IRIS provides a comprehensive security framework that protects data, controls access, and ensures compliance. This guide introduces essential security features for developers new to IRIS, covering authentication, authorization, encryption, and practical implementation strategies.

Throughout this guide, we'll use Docker containers to demonstrate security configurations in a practical, reproducible environment.

The 2025.3 release of InterSystems IRIS® data platform, InterSystems IRIS^® for Health, and InterSystems Health Connect™ is now Generally Available (GA). This is a Continuous Delivery (CD) release.

Release Highlights:

• Secure Wallet: A new encrypted framework for managing sensitive data, built on the IRISSECURITY database, improving system security and access control.
• Expanded Observability & Cloud Integrations: Enhanced OpenTelemetry metrics, including new process and ECP metrics, plus journal archiving now supports Azure Blob Storage for cost-efficient retention.

Now Under Heavy Rotation, Your IrisCluster Secrets

A few days before Kubecon, the external-secrets-operator went GA with 1.0.0 and is set to ride shotgun for Kubernetes Secrets Management and put Vault in the backseat.  You can glance at the "Providers" list for the solution and immediatley understand that you can leave the "which Secrets Manager" conversation to others while you do your job utilizing external secrets on your IrisCluster workloads, which by my count with the operator and a single IrisCluster is more than a fistful of secrets of different types, even under a single tenant.  So let them sprawl, the secrets managers that is, not the secrets.

Hello everyone! 👋

I have a question regarding roles and resources. 

To give you some context: I have a user who has been assigned only the role %HS_UsageDashboard_Access.This allows them to access the dashboards correctly (by giving the direct URL). Then,  if I try to access the Management Portal with this same user, I can log in with no access to any resources within it (as expected).

The point is that I would like to completely deny him access to the Management Portal, while allowing him to view only the dashboards, as expected from the %HS_UsageDashboard_Access role.

IKO Helm Status: WFH

Here is an option for your headspace if you are designing an multi-cluster architecture and the Operator is an FTE to the design.  You can run the Operator from a central Kubernetes cluster (A), and point it to another Kubernetes cluster (B), so that when the apply an IrisCluster to B the Operator works remotely on A and plans the cluster accordingly on B.  This design keeps some resource heat off the actual workload cluster, spares us some serviceaccounts/rbac and gives us only one operator deployment to worry about so we can concentrate on the IRIS workloads.

"Haul" a Portable Registry for Airgapped IrisClusters

Rancher Government Hauler streamlines deploying and maintaining InterSystems container workloads in air-gapped environments by simplifying how you package and move required assets. It treats container images, Helm charts, and other files as content and collections, letting you fetch, store, and distribute them declaratively or via CLI — without changing your existing workflows.   Meaning your charts and what have yous, can have conditionals on your pull locations in Helm values, etc. 

If you have been tracking how HealthShare is being deployed via IPM Packages, you can certainly appreciate the adoption of OCI compliance storage for the packages themselves using ORAS... which is core to the Hauler solution.

Securing IRIS Integrations with Mutual TLS (mTLS): A Practical Guide

In today’s enterprise environments, secure communication between systems is not optional—it’s essential. Whether you're integrating InterSystems IRIS with cloud APIs, internal microservices, or third-party platforms, Mutual TLS (mTLS) offers a powerful way to ensure both ends of the connection are authenticated and encrypted.

This post walks through how to configure IRIS for mTLS and how to validate your certificates to avoid common pitfalls.

🔐 What is Mutual TLS (mTLS)?

Hi Community,

We're super excited to share the new video in the "Rarified Air" series on our InterSystems Developers YouTube:

⏯ Practical Cybersecurity Measures for Stronger Organizational Resilience

Hello Community,

I’m working on an InterSystems IRIS production that needs to call an external API using OAuth client credentials (client_id and client_secret). For security reasons, I must pass these credentials via environment variables in my Docker container.

In the IRIS terminal, I can successfully retrieve these environment variables using $System.Util.GetEnviron("api-clientid") and $System.Util.GetEnviron("api-clientsecret"). However, inside my Business Operation class (OnMessage method), these environment variables return empty strings.

I have a personal copy of Cache which I use to help me with certain things. The instance resides on my Windows desktop. The apps I use a web enabled. It would be great if I could access my apps via web browser from my laptop without having to keep a copy of Cache on my laptop. It would make it difficult to keep the databases synced. So, if I restart my Cache instance, then I can use get to my apps by entering the url: http://ipadd:57772/csp/user/myapp.cls. but later, after having closed the browser on my laptop, if I try to open a browser session on my desktop I get license limit exceeded.