Patient Safety, Security, and Privacy
The risks of an insecure network and connected medical
devices goes far beyond stolen medical records; it’s about
people’s lives. Insulin and infusion pumps, for instance, can
be hijacked to deliver a different dose than prescribed. To
make matters worse, hospitals may use infusion pumps
over a long lifetime, and legacy devices can be extremely
vulnerable to cyber-attacks. In an environment flooded
with life critical devices, patient safety is of the utmost
importance. All devices require a secure connection to
reliably and flawlessly communicate via the network and
deliver vital patient information, so the networks must
maintain severe protection against potential threats and
remain uninterrupted.
The reality is, however, that healthcare organizations have
not invested in their infrastructure to address these growing
threats. With the introduction of new technology, and the
continued use of legacy devices, IT requires a network
that is simple, agile, and resilient, all while maintaining
compliance with strict regulations like HIPAA and GDPR.
With Extreme Networks, healthcare organizations can
achieve the policy-based network access control and
automation needed to remove the risk of human error,
validate and protect clinical devices in real-time, and ensure
patient safety, security, and privacy. What's more, Extreme
Networks is the first major cloud-managed networking
vendor to attain ISO/IEC 27001 certification for its
Information Security Management Systems (ISMS).
Critical Technology Issues
Maintain Compliance with Strict Regulations
A constant risk to hospitals and their patients are
unapproved applications and rogue devices that may
appear on the network, and either permit unauthorized
access or interfere with other devices. Having a means to
monitor all devices and applications that operate across
the network is vital for healthcare organizations. Just as
important are the audit capabilities necessary to report
on who, what, where, when, and how patient data is
accessed. With a robust infrastructure and comprehensive
network management solution, it’s possible to simplify and
automate compliance with strict regulations.
Extreme Networks create a secure healthcare network
without compromising simplicity through policy-based,
end-to-end hyper-segmentation. While traditional network
segmentation approaches are complex with multiple
levels of protocols, route policies, and access control lists,
Extreme’s approach based on policy and fabric delivers a
simpler, more automated alternative.
Ensure Medical Device and Network Security
Healthcare organizations are going through a fundamental
transformation to provide the best patient care, with
technology playing a vital role in patient safety,
engagement, and treatment. As new, innovative devices
and applications are added on to the network, safeguarding
critical patient information and meeting regulatory
compliance is essential to protect patients, facilities, and
devices from the ever-present threat of breaches. What’s
more, it is not uncommon for a single medical device
system to incorrectly be configured and compromise the
entire network.
Extreme Networks provides hospitals with a resilient
wired and wireless network infrastructure that efficiently
on-boards and manages devices used by patients and
clinicians with the necessary security capabilities for
data compliance. From a single window, IT can set policy
controls to determine device access rights based on
user, device type, location, and time of day. This unique
capability provides automated, secure, and fast provisioning
and control of devices on the network.
Secure IoT and Legacy Devices for Peace of Mind
IoT is having a profound impact in every industry and
healthcare is no exception. From remote monitoring
systems to smart sensors and medical device integration,
connected technologies have become more pervasive in
healthcare; and for good reason. IoT has the potential to
deliver better patient care, improve operational efficiency,
and drive down healthcare costs. However, IoT poses new
requirements and challenges to ensure cybersecurity and
patient data privacy. In addition, legacy medical devices
without inherent internet accessibility are also being
connected and significantly increasing security risks.
Extreme Defender for IoT is a unique, award-winning
solution that delivers security for end points with limited or
no embedded security capabilities. It is especially targeted
to aging, wired medical devices that need to roam around
a room, building, or campus. It complements a hospital’s
existing security infrastructure by adding additional
defense directly to the device. It can be deployed over any
network infrastructure to enable secure IoT management
without significant network changes, giving healthcare
organizations simple and fast peace of mind.
Hyper-Segmentation and Stealth
Simplifies Security
While a healthcare network must be capable of connecting
all medical devices, it must also be very selective in doing
so. Authorized devices should be expeditiously on-boarded,
while unauthorized devices must be prevented from
gaining access to the network or moved to a patient/visitor
network. Deploying a network that can isolate medical
devices from the rest of the network through hypersegmentation helps ensure healthcare network security.
Access control capabilities allow network administrators to
authorize device access based on location, time of day, and
function. By keeping medical devices virtually separated
from all the known and unknown devices, an attack on one
device won’t lead to a hack on another.
Extreme Networks ensure network security with necessary
segmentation and partitioning. Secure network segments
can be created quickly and easily, end-to-end, without
requiring any additional overlay protocols. The network can
be designed to fit the needs of different departments in a
traditional multitenant environment, like a clinic or patient
records department, and seperate different types of devices
and users, such as smart phones or IoT devices worn
by patients, and even isolate traffic types for security or
regulatory compliance, including medical imaging devices
to comply with HIPAA. What’s more, through the avoidance
of complex configuration issues, network isolation is
deployed quickly and easily via simple edgeonly configuration.
Comprehensive Service and Support
Hospitals never close and neither does Extreme’s 100%
insourced Global Technical Access Center (GTAC.) 24/7
support ensures that all questions can be answered
promptly to keep the network functioning at all times.
Extreme Networks is the only company in the industry that
takes an architectural approach to bringing products to
market from R&D to product release. As a result, all of our
network products, from wireless to wired, are managed by a
single network screen for easy management by constrained
healthcare IT teams.
Summary
Healthcare organizations today are balancing the complexities of digital transformation with innovative technology, maintaining safety and compliance, and dealing with age-old challenges like streamlining processes and maintaining connectivity – all to drive better patient outcomes. Safeguarding critical patient information and meeting regulatory compliance is essential to protect people, places, and assets from the ever-present threat of breaches. Extreme Networks delivers the end-toend clinical-grade infrastructure solutions healthcare organizations need to meet the reliability, scalability, security, and intelligence required for life, patient, and mission critical initiatives.