The healthcare industry is at the forefront of digital transformation. As early as 2014, 83% of healthcare organizations surveyed by HIMSS Analytics were using cloud-based services and SaaS apps. Over the years, healthcare providers have turned to managed service providers (MSPs) as key partners to accelerate cloud adoption and strengthen data protection.
The right MSP with robust data security and management capabilities can help address many of the top business priorities facing healthcare providers today—among them, complying with HIPAA requirements and removing the burdens of day-to-day IT operations.
Through partnerships, Cohesity empowers MSPs to offer a data protection solution that helps safeguard protected health information (PHI) by incorporating the U.S. Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) best practices.
Patient health records are top ransomware targets
A recent Healthcare Data Breach Statistics report, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, shows that the number of cyber breaches and IT incidents involving data breaches of 500 or more electronic health records (EHR) data continues to trend upwards.
Stolen medical data command top dollar on the black market, as much as $1,000 according to FierceHealthcare. And the demand continues to this day. Last April, the U.S. government warned of ‘exceptionally aggressive‘ ransomware threats targeting healthcare. Palo Alto Networks reported in its 2021 Annual Threat Report that healthcare organizations are the top target for ransomware attackers.
Navigating the increasingly malicious threat activity while staying in compliance with HIPAA regulations poses considerable challenges for healthcare IT teams. This is where Cohesity’s security-first approach to data protection excels.
Modern data protection solution for healthcare providers
Cohesity DataProtect software forms the foundation of a managed backup and recovery service (BaaS) that empowers MSPs to deliver robust data protection to their healthcare customers.
Path Forward IT of Cincinnati, Ohio, is a good example. It offers Patient Shield, HIPAA-compliant healthcare data protection with the benefit of turnkey EHR data recovery. Patient Shield helps deliver business continuity through end-to-end backup solutions to protect data wherever it resides—from on-premises to the edge and public cloud.
MSPs, like Path Forward IT, can use managed BaaS to protect physical, virtual, and Microsoft 365 workloads while helping their healthcare customers:
- Defend data, including PHI, against ransomware
- Safeguard access to critical data
- Minimize downtime with rapid data recovery at scale
- Simplify operations with policy-based data protection
Path Forward IT relies heavily on the Cohesity Threat Defense feature suite, from the MFA, encryption to protect the access layer to the DataLock, immutability, and all the way to the ransomware auto-detection. The protections start at the access or first defense layer, while the core is fortified with advanced ransomware detection and fast remediation capabilities. Each function of the data security layer is distinct:
- Strengthening cyber resilience by helping prevent unauthorized access – Cohesity’s first layer applies Zero Trust security principles. It features multifactor authentication (MFA) and role-based access (RBAC). These methods are proven effective in helping prevent impersonation and overcoming breaches by limiting user access privileges to medical backup data.
- Tamperproofing PHI against accidental deletion and ransomware – The second layer combines U.S. Federally-approved encryption (FIPS-140-2) with immutable snapshots and DataLock to help prevent ransomware attackers from tampering with backup data at-rest.
- Initiating fast data recovery to minimize downtime and disruptions – A sophisticated AI-driven anomaly detection algorithm is built into the Cohesity Data Cloud platform to help uncover hidden ransomware threats. When an anomaly in a backup is detected, Data Cloud provides an early warning and actionable alerts with remediation options to rapidly restore large data sets.
Seamless hybrid cloud migration and freedom from vendor lock-in
Cohesity’s purpose-built architecture is designed for cloud deployments. It enables Path Forward IT to seamlessly perform backups every four hours with 30-day on-prem data retention and a choice of daily offsite or cloud replications with one or seven-year retention terms.
With Cohesity, MSPs can help healthcare IT staff to easily “lift and shift” critical data and applications from on-prem environments to the cloud or between clouds, depending on dynamic cost structures and business strategies. Such deployment flexibility delivers faster data access as most business-critical workloads run on on-prem servers, and a massive reduction in storage footprint by offloading less-sensitive data and apps to the public clouds.
“We leverage Cohesity because its security-centric approach allows for rapid deployment of on-prem or in the cloud and helps deliver the compliance needs of our healthcare customers,” said Matt Haines, COO of Path Forward IT.
Unlike legacy data protection solutions, managed BaaS, powered by Cohesity DataProtect, can help MSPs and their healthcare customers avoid vendor lock-in. Large regional and national MSPs and healthcare organizations that require global support from pre-approved vendors will appreciate the value of Cohesity’s validated solutions from Cisco, HPE, and Lenovo and compatible primary storage systems from Pure Storage and HPE.
The freedom to choose extends to major EHR systems, including Epic, nextgen, Greenway, and Allscripts, all certified and supported by Path Forward IT.
Healthcare providers should take a security step forward
Complying with HIPAA’s data protection and security guidelines is essential to the success of every healthcare business. Cohesity-Powered MSPs with turnkey BaaS solutions can help incorporate the most rigorous security and privacy protocols to protect and quickly restore critical data and IT infrastructure.
Learn more about how Cohesity empowers MSPs like Path Forward IT, saves money for Community Hospital, reduces downtime at Piedmont Healthcare, and helps Sky Lakes Medical Center avoid paying a ransom.
Find a Cohesity-Powered MSP to secure, protect, and do more with your data.
