Illumio > Case Studies > Large Medical Group Enables Healthcare Compliance with Illumio

Large Medical Group Enables Healthcare Compliance with Illumio

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

Illumio Adaptive Security Platform® (ASP)

Tech Stack

Cloud Computing
Data Center

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Technology Category

Cybersecurity & Privacy - Network Security

Applicable Industries

Healthcare & Hospitals

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Cybersecurity

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

The customer is one of the largest medical groups in the United States, with multiple regional data centers that hold healthcare information for 400,000 patients and 400 physicians. The group was facing a challenge in managing the initial scope of its network segmentation project, which had become unmanageable in terms of time, expense, and ongoing maintenance. The group's IT team was forced to focus on its core objectives: segmenting applications and segmenting people from servers and environments. The group was also planning a gradual transition to the cloud, which was another driver for the need for a robust security solution.

The Challenge

The IT team for one of the country’s largest medical groups was initially overwhelmed by the scope of its network segmentation project in terms of time, expense, and ongoing maintenance. The team had to refocus on its core objectives: segmenting applications and segmenting people from servers and environments. The team was concerned about the 5% of attacks that could potentially infiltrate their network and remain undetected for a long time, learning about their environment. They needed a solution that could limit access from day one and prevent a desktop from pinging a server.

The Solution

The customer chose Illumio ASP for an initiative to exercise internal controls to prevent lateral movement. Specifically, the solution was used to identify PHI for 400,000 patients in its environment, control what can and can’t be transmitted, and get alerts and automated lockdowns on actions that are outside of normal behavior. Illumio ASP looks at the network and infrastructure as an application and then baselines who really needs to see or access the backend layer of that infrastructure. It then takes a picture of that and allows the customer to confirm who needs to see it. It takes the visual footprint away from everyone and every device that doesn’t need to see it, and allows the customer to easily lock down communications at the server layer and even the process layer.

Operational Impact

Ensuring robust protection for a large body of healthcare records already means balancing information overload from multiple security solutions with the need to receive actionable insights.
The primary driver for choosing Illumio was ease of use.
The solution was not overly taxing on the admins and was plug-and-play out of the box.
Illumio ASP is superiorly designed to do a specific task. It doesn’t have all the overhead, management, and additional training needs that come with larger vendors.