How MEDITECH adds advanced security to its cloud-based healthcare solutions with Cloud IDS

Proficiency with cloud technology is a competitive advantage and major selling point for MEDITECH. On its website the company describes its MEDITECH Cloud Platform as a way to "[g]ive your clinicians and patients a better, more mobile healthcare experience while ensuring your organization's long-term sustainability" and "the latest step in our journey to deliver innovative, cost-effective healthcare technology."

Cloud IDS: Built on industry-leading network security technology

Google Cloud IDS is built with Palo Alto Networks’ industry-leading threat detection technologies, so it was a natural choice for MEDITECH.

Tom Moriarty, Manager, Information Security at MEDITECH says: “Keeping our environment secure is our primary reason for deploying Cloud IDS. In healthcare, infrastructure and patient data security are absolutely crucial." 

Fast and easy to deploy

Tom and his team were extremely impressed with how quickly they were able to set up Cloud IDS. “We deployed it in a couple of days,” he reports. “It should take one person less than a day of steady work.”

Because Cloud IDS is already integrated with the components of Google Cloud, implementation required very little configuration work and no changes to MEDITECH’s network architecture. Since the company had experience with Palo Alto Networks’ intrusion detection software, they were confident about the detections, and already knew how to interpret them. Because of the architecture, they didn’t need to write any rules or come up with their own detections. Industry-leading, third-party validated threat detection rules were already included, and updated daily. And of course, the security team is happy to be working with a cloud-hosted product that doesn’t require installing and managing any local hardware or software, or managing load balancing, scaling, performance monitoring, and licensing.

Out of the box integration with Google Chronicle

Google Chronicle is an advanced security analytics tool that enables security teams to identify and respond to fast-moving attacks. It can store and analyze petabytes of security telemetry. By correlating threat indicators inside an organization’s network with intelligence about global threats in the wild, it supports threat detection, threat hunting, malware investigation, security forensics, and other key activities of cybersecurity groups.

Tom’s team was very pleased that the new threat detection solution works out of the box with Chronicle. He says: “We are using Google Chronicle as our security analytics tool for our corporate environment. By integrating Cloud IDS with Chronicle, we are able to analyze threats surfaced by Cloud IDS.” 

Helping with compliance

MEDITECH works to meet or exceed the requirements of industry standards and security frameworks. Google Security’s technology plays an important role in achieving this objective, according to Tom: “Cloud IDS helps us address our compliance requirements and best practices.”

Conclusion

MEDITECH business strategy depends on maintaining a position at the forefront of cloud technology. Strong security is a key element of that position. Cloud IDS provides the company with industry-leading threat detection technology, simplified operations, and integration with key security workflow tools like Chronicle. It also supports the organization’s compliance requirements. That will allow MEDITECH to continue to deliver innovative, cost-effective, and secure technology to its healthcare customers and their patients.

^{Google Cloud blog note: Cloud IDS pricing is based on a per-hour charge for the Cloud IDS endpoint and the amount of traffic that is inspected. You can learn more about Cloud IDS and request a 30 day trial credit on the Cloud IDS webpage.}