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In today’s laboratories, security isn’t just about locks and keycards—it’s about protecting data, samples, systems, and reputations. As labs become more digital, decentralized, and collaborative, managing laboratory security has become both more complex and more critical. Whether you operate a clinical diagnostics lab, an environmental testing facility, or an R&D center, strong lab security is essential to ensure operational integrity,…

Consolidating aspects of your lab’s operations within a laboratory information management system (LIMS) improves your lab’s information security, in part, by controlling access to client information and testing data. Access control is a two-stage process comprised of: Authentication: The verification of a user’s identity, and Authorization: The granting of limited access privileges within the system. This blog post will discuss…

Oil and natural gas are fossil fuels, formed underground from the remains of plants and animals. Since the mid-1800s, the United States has been drilling wells and extracting oil and gas. The oil is refined into gasoline and diesel for vehicle and jet fuels, and distillates are extracted as petrochemicals used for a range of manufacturing products. Natural gas is…

Laboratory information security is not merely a question of who can access your systems. What you allow people to access once they are in matters just as much. In a previous blog post, we discussed the first pillar of access control: authentication, or the process of verifying user identity. In this post, we will discuss the second pillar, authorization, and…

Infectious diseases are still among the leading causes of death worldwide. In 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that infectious diseases were emerging at an unprecedented rate. Over 40 infectious diseases have been discovered in the past 50 years, including AIDS, SARS, MERS, Ebola, avian influenza, swine flu, Zika, and most recently COVID-19. Some infectious diseases have even reemerged,…

When shopping for a laboratory information management system (LIMS), it’s best to remind yourself of the old idiom “you get what you pay for.” The number of businesses offering LIMS software has grown significantly over the past few decades, and cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) providers are the new norm. The global LIMS market was valued at $1.3 billion…

When you hear the word “metallurgy,” what comes to mind? For this author, the first thought was an allergy to metals. Boy, was I wrong! Metallurgy is a branch of science and technology concerned with the properties of metals and their production and purification. If that sounds fascinating yet a bit removed from your daily life, you would be mistaken.…

Testing in the food and beverage industry has been primarily centered on detecting microbial and chemical contaminants. These types of tests are vital to the general consumer, as these contaminants can cause illness outbreaks if not detected promptly. However, in the last two decades, food safety and testing labs find themselves not only testing for contaminants but also for food…

The process of farming has changed little in thousands of years. A farmer works the fields in preparation for planting, plants the seeds, tends to the plants as they begin to grow, harvests the crop, and starts the cycle over and over again. However, as the Earth’s population continues to rise, the food production demand will also escalate. The UN…

In the simplest terms, scalability means that something can be changed in size or scale. When referring to a laboratory information management system (LIMS), scalability means the system doesn’t need to be redesigned to handle the increased workload. It can evolve with a laboratory as it has an uptick in concurrent users, the need for more storage capacity, increased sample…