medical

Secure your devices and records with X-Barrier

Netlayer’s X-Barrier takes on one of the toughest challenges in Corporate IT: Medical device network protection. From a plethora of edge devices to critical network components with sensitive information...all in an increasingly strict regulatory environment. The whole medical device network presents IT security with significantly difficult high-risk environment. The stakes are high...hackers are already stealing patient identification, health, and financial data. On the horizon is insurance fraud, injury or death. Today’s technology makes it easier to breach traditional IT perimeter defenses to reach equipment that lacks protection. X- Barrier from Netlayer implements a critical strategic defense layer to current infrastructure.

Defense – and compliance – in depth

X-Barrier protects medical care equipment and intranets in depth...delivering protection and analytics to the device level. X-Barrier touches on the key areas of compliance: endpoints, data access, applications, infrastructure and security management, thus leaving your institution better defended not only against hackers but also against liability and litigation.

Given the rising frequency of malicious activity on healthcare service provider intranets, the idea that a single firewall provides sufficient protection no longer holds true. Healthcare sector intranets, without internal protection, are tempting targets for malicious activity such as unauthorized record viewing. Fortunately, X- Barrier presents a solution that does not require a significant reorganization of an existing intranet.

Security for gear old and new

At the core of X-Barrier is the NFVgrid analytics engine. The NFVgrid analytics engine is fine-tuned for an IoT-intensive and micro-segmentation oriented environment to ensure that each device or group has its own rules under the broader security umbrella. This includes older, but still vital, security equipment.

Until recently, medical devices were built without much thought to security. Firewalls were considered state-of-the-art, and intranet-linked devices were considered safe. However, hacking has become more sophisticated, and the endpoints on a network must be considered vulnerable. Moreover, there is an increasing variety of ways for a determined hacker to get to them. And with a traditional security regime, once the hacker is in, reporting on the intrusion can be slow – sometimes weeks or months can pass before the activity is noticed. As a result, databases are breached, infrastructure is compromised, and both endpoints and applications are at risk and network operators would be completely unaware of the problem.

Instant quarantine

X-Barrier solves this by observing all intranet traffic flow to and from end-point devices under a variety of behavior analysis algorithms. X-Barrier reacts immediately to quarantine the nodes involved when thresholds are crossed or unusual activity is identified. By treating the network as a collection of micro- segments, authorized and unauthorized activity is easily determined. X-Barrier detects and blocks inappropriate communication attempts no matter where they are from. With X-Barrier installed, a hacker would have to rewrite the security provisions for that micro-segment, and this can only be done by authorized network operators.

Unlike traditional security arrangements, X-Barrier makes reporting fast and clear. Quarantined nodes and suspicious activity such as low- or high- bandwidth use, or historically unusual activity, are all presented on the X-Barrier dashboard as soon as the alarm is thrown. This is a difference that can play a crucial role when regulatory compliance questions arise.