ForeScout provides real-time network visibility for healthcare organisations

CAMPBELL, USA: In healthcare, where patient care takes precedence, a secure network with no disruption to users and service is essential due to the time-critical nature of the industry. Furthermore, healthcare IT professionals face pressure to allow mobile and medical devices on the network, protect sensitive information and comply with industry regulations such as HIPAA - all the while working to optimise resources and costs. 

Offering a flexible and cost-effective approach, ForeScout Technologies, Inc.'s network security solution, CounterACT, provides a comprehensive, easy-to-deploy solution to help healthcare networks gain complete visibility and control of every device, including medical equipment and users connecting to the networks, without disruption - even at the busiest, most crucial moments.

Like the majority of business areas, the healthcare sector is facing pressure to implement an effective Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategy. Physicians want to use the technologies to which they are accustomed while IT has to account for personal device usage as well as network access for both staff and guests.

Another major issue facing the healthcare sector is identity and access management. Unique to the healthcare industry, people who are not true employees of the organisation, such as visiting doctors and community doctors, often handle patients' personal medical information. This adds another complicated layer to implementing a secure BYOD policy, as these visiting employees often use their own technologies to access sensitive data on the networks.

Additionally, hospital settings host numerous unknown devices, such as sterile washers, MRI scanners, heart monitors, ventilators and more that must be connected to these organisations' networks. Federal regulations and security standards for these devices vary, and FDA rules often dictate what can and cannot be done to them. 

With so many different devices accessing the network, how do you keep patients' personal health data safe and secure? It is now more important than ever to protect data and increase security when handling medical information. These challenges combine to make healthcare networks open and susceptible to malware, unauthorised access, data leakage, breaches and availability risks.

For nearly a decade, CounterACT has helped healthcare organisations gain operational intelligence and policy-based control for all devices, users, systems and applications attempting to connect to an enterprise network - wired or wireless, managed or unmanaged, PC or mobile. With CounterACT, healthcare networks can seamlessly achieve continuous monitoring and mitigation of all endpoints while upholding the customer experience and infrastructure integrity.

ForeScout CounterACT offers many critical features for healthcare organisations working to manage network threats amidst providing the best patient care possible, including: rapid deployment, agentless visibility,flexible policy enforcement, smart guest management, continuous monitoring with built-in threat prevention and Bi-directional interoperability.