Caring for young patients also means ensuring data security

The Challenge

Bethany Children’s Health Center was founded in 1898 by a schoolteacher heartbroken to see children with no place to go for healthcare. Today, Bethany is a leading pediatric center with a 160-bed hospital, outpatient clinics, and rehabilitation services. “Our mission statement says we believe life is sacred,” says Nico Gomez, Chief Executive Officer. “We dedicate ourselves to maximizing the potential of every child, no matter what medical issues they have. Data is like our blood flow.”

That focus on young patients’ wellbeing also colors the center’s approach to data security. “We take data security very seriously,” says Kevin Chambers, Chief Information Executive. “Our children’s medications and diets are adjusted on a regular basis. Being able to quickly restore recent data in the event of a system failure or cyberattack is critical to protect the kids’ health and wellbeing—and earn the trust of their families.”

Cohesity understands our mission and protects our ability to make data-based decisions. The less I have to worry about data security, the more I can focus on other things that are critically important to us—like making sure that each child in our care has an opportunity to do what they want to do and be what they want to be.

Nico Gomez

Chief Executive Officer, Bethany Children's Health Center

The Solution

When Bethany evaluated leading data protection solutions, “Cohesity won hands down,” says Chambers, who has also brought Cohesity to two previous employers. “Cohesity has the quickest restores, is the easiest to use, and has multiple layers of security.” Protections include immutable backups, multifactor authentication, and a requirement that at least two people (a quorum) approve any changes to backups. “During backups Cohesity also scans data for signs of malware,  stopping the backup and raising an alert if malware is found,” Chambers says. “In that case, we can restore clean data from the previous backup so that patient care isn’t interrupted.”

For resilience, Bethany follows the “3-2-1” principle, storing three copies of data on two different media, with one copy offsite. Two Cohesity immutable backups are kept on-prem, with the third one in Cohesity FortKnox, an isolated cloud vault. “FortKnox saved us the time and expense of finding an offsite location for our third backup copy,” says Chambers. “No one can touch the backups in FortKnox unless a system administrator and I approve the change—another way we keep bad actors out.”

AI is part of Bethany’s strategic plan, and practitioners and administrators are brainstorming ideas for using Cohesity Gaia, a conversational AI tool, to unlock insights from M365 data and other sources. One goal is simplifying compliance. “With Gaia, teams will be able to pose natural language questions to quickly find information, saving them from having to read through tons of email and documents,” Chambers says. “We expect Gaia to reduce the burden on our lawyers by helping them find and evaluate information in minutes, not the hours or days it takes today.” Another plan for Gaia is generating custom reports—for example, to understand trends in patient needs or staffing requirements. “Until now the only people who could produce custom reports had specialized training, and those skills are hard to find.” Chambers says. “With Gaia, anyone can create a custom report by describing in plain language what they want the report to show.”

The Results

“Everyone who works at Bethany takes pride in seeing our patients succeed,” Chambers says. “I can’t do what the practitioners and nurses do—but as an IT professional I can try to make their work as easy as possible. Cohesity helps us make sure our practitioners can access the data they need to maximize the potential of every child.”

IT staff save time because all backups and restores—on-prem and in Cohesity FortKnox—are monitored and managed from the same interface. “The ease of use of Cohesity is a big deal to us,” says Chambers. “We can back up, protect, and restore data with less manpower—and with a higher level of security than we had before.”

The IT team can also recover more quickly after an attack or system failure thanks to Cohesity’s fast restores. “Plus, we now have the flexibility to almost instantly restore a single mailbox, email, or document shared in a Teams channel,” Chambers says.

As Bethany Children’s continues to grow and expand, the executive team looks forward to continued partnership with Cohesity. “Cohesity is a partner that understands our mission and protects our ability to make data-based decisions,” says Gomez. “The less I have to worry about data security, the more I can really focus on other things that are critically important to us—like making sure every child in our care has an opportunity to do what they want to do and be what they want to be.”

Chambers adds, “Being able to watch the kids go through and overcome their challenges humbles you,” he says. “ It’s heartwarming. Our kids are incredible, and it’s so great to watch them grow and change and heal.”