Advancing medical technology creates a wide risk surface for cyber attacks. Patient, payment, and other PII data remain at risk with traditional cybersecurity strategies. Microsegmentation offers healthcare providers new risk identification, engagement, and containment strategies.
From contractor-based patient data leaks to hacked IOT devices, healthcare organizations are no strangers to the exposure of millions of patient or other confidential files, with devastating financial and trust implications. These cyberattacks are frequently driven by unauthorized users taking advantage of outdated perimeter-based defenses for lateral attacks, gaining access to periphery systems through one point of access.
Healthcare in particular faces elevated risk due to the opportunities of rapidly advancing medical device capability, paired with stringent regulations such as HIPAA, creating a tension between medical advancement and the necessity of privacy and compliance.
Today, rapidly evolving cybersecurity standards can help earlier detection and containment of these threats. For this year and beyond, one of the central pillars of any healthcare organization’s IT cybersecurity strategy should be microsegmentation.
Microsegmentation is a cybersecurity strategy that enhances a healthcare organization’s IT network to create granular controls and deploy targeted solutions to control data flow, limit unauthorized access - including devices, and rapidly detect and contain potential lateral access threats within the network.
Unlike traditional perimeter-based security, microsegmentation focuses on protecting workloads and data within a contained area, allowing for granular control and autonomous response over users, devices, and intent evaluation in connecting data and applications across a network.
An effective microsegmentation strategy enhances healthcare organizations’ ability to:
Reduce the Attack Surface / Segmentation: The principal value of microsegmentation lies in its ability to remove unnecessary connection points, particularly to external entry points, and isolate breaches in segmented zones. By segmenting patient records, clinical data, and financial information into contained areas based on user and intent evaluation, healthcare providers can mitigate unauthorized access and data leaks, including automated breach containment.
Ensure Compliance with Less Training Cycles: HIPAA and other healthcare regulations mandate rigorous data security protocols. Microsegmentation offers a structured way to comply with evolving standards by implementing uniform and easy-to-update cloud-based access controls.
Improved Visibility and Monitoring: Microsegments allow for deployments of finely tuned tools that have granular controls for the unique environment they are monitoring, creating clear oversight over data flow and access points, and improving the ability to detect and respond to threats in real-time.
Agility: Microsegmentation is aligned with flexible network architecture principles, supporting a multitude of environments, including on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud.
Scalability: Microsegmentation can evolve with an organization’s infrastructure and security scaling needs.
1. Build a Cross-Functional Security Team to Assess Your Network and IT Roadmap: Bring together security, IT, compliance, and clinical staff to ensure the microsegmentation strategy aligns with the unique demands of healthcare workflows. Identify and map all assets, devices, and applications within your network to understand where sensitive data resides. Understand how current IT roadmap initiatives such as IOT/Edge Computing may impact your device, user access, and read/write strategies.
2. Prioritize High-Risk Assets Based on Threat Sensitivity: Identify and classify patient information, lab results, and other critical data types to prioritize protection efforts. Identify segmentation points for the most critical parts of the network, such as electronic health records (EHRs) and financial systems, to quickly protect high-value data. Understand the potential impact of microsegmentation on insurance coverage and policies.
3. Start Small and Expand Gradually: Select tools that integrate with your architecture. Progressively expand to expand critical environments.
4. Leverage Automated Monitoring and Reporting: Automated monitoring tools help healthcare organizations identify breaches, unusual data movement, and compliance violations in real time, enabling rapid responses to incidents. Integrate automation tools that can enforce Zero Trust by dynamically verifying permissions, reducing the risk of human error. Develop automated reporting, which can include breaches across user roles, data sensitivity and compliance standards.
5. Ensure Integration with Broader Security Tools: Ensure that microsegmentation integrates with other security solutions such as firewalls, intrusion detection, and SIEM systems for seamless protection.
6. Train Staff on Incident Response Plan: Even the best security protocols can face unexpected breaches. Develop a well-defined response plan that details the steps to isolate, contain, and mitigate threats. Monitor and ensure proper guidelines are followed for data breach response.
7. Build in Regular Compliance Audits and Segmentation Adjustments; Maintain System Performance: Conduct regular tests to ensure autonomous responses are effective, without unintended consequences. Continuously monitor segmented areas for unusual activity, and regularly update segmentation controls to meet compliance standards, and address emerging threats. Security leaders should work closely with operations teams to sustain operational performance, balancing security and usability.
Selecting the right vendor is critical, as it determines the quality of the journey taken in developing the right security, scalability, and compliance capabilities of the microsegmentation strategy. Here are critical factors to consider in choosing the right vendor:
Experience in Healthcare Security: Look for vendors with proven experience in healthcare IT security, who will be better prepared to understand the data, application, and workflow implications of healthcare-specific challenges, from HIPAA compliance to handling sensitive patient data.
Expertise in Compliance: Ensure that the vendor is well-versed in healthcare regulations, offering built-in compliance tools to support ongoing HIPAA and HITECH compliance.
Compatibility with Existing Infrastructure: The ideal vendor should offer solutions compatible with the current IT environment, offering cost-benefit analysis for complex legacy IT solution considerations.
Scalability: As healthcare technology advances, so do security implications. Choose a vendor whose microsegmentation solutions are reflective of the flexibility required to support and scale with the organization’s evolving IT ecosystem offerings.
Tailored Automation and Analytics: Many vendors offer advanced automation features, such as automatic policy updates and real-time analytics, but lack customization experience with healthcare operations. Only environment-aligned capabilities allow for meaningful insight in assessing the impact and response strategy to emerging security threats.
24/7 Support and Incident Response Customer Service: Security issues in healthcare can arise at any time. A vendor with round-the-clock support and fast incident response services can help ensure microsegmentation closes the gap from identification to threat elimination.
Transparent Pricing and Long-Term Value: Transparent vendors provide a clear breakdown of costs, including setup, ongoing support, and scaling. Long-term value is crucial in healthcare - prioritize vendors that define clear improvements in KPIs to create measurable ROI for your organization’s microsegmentation strategy.
Read more: Top Microsegmentation Solutions & Why
For healthcare organizations, microsegmentation is a proactive strategy to enhance security and compliance, meeting cyber threats where they operate. With the right strategy, vendor partner, and ongoing monitoring, healthcare providers can safeguard patient data, reduce risk, and adapt to evolving regulatory standards, creating a safer environment for their patients and greater healthcare ecosystem partners.
Ready to take your organization’s defenses to the next level? Contact us today to develop your zero-trust strategy and harness the power of microsegmentation.