VMware partners with Intel's Healthcare Security Readiness Programme

VMware has collaborated with Intel Health and Life Sciences to help global healthcare organizations better understand the current state of their security readiness. Joining Intel’s Healthcare Security Readiness Program, VMware now offers a new complimentary service that enables healthcare IT teams to gain valuable insight into their security posture. The new initiative also enables organizations to identify safeguard solutions that can be implemented to further reduce risk and improve their security posture.

VMware and Intel will showcase this programme in VMware booth #3661 at the 2017 HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition, February 19–23, 2017 in Orlando, Fla.

As a participant in Intel’s Healthcare Security Readiness Programme, VMware offers healthcare organizations a one-hour, complimentary, confidential engagement with a security assessor to measure their organization’s technical security priorities and safeguards using a unique healthcare security maturity model. To date, the model has been used by more than 60 healthcare organizations across nine countries to create a baseline against which participating organizations can measure their technical readiness across 42 security capabilities. The model also looks at administrative controls such as policies, incident response plans and business continuity/disaster recovery capabilities.

Participating healthcare organizations will receive a report summarizing the findings, including their maturity level, how they compare with the rest of the healthcare industry, any gaps in their security and a multi-year plan to improve their infrastructure and security preparedness. This report can also help organizations identify where addressing a gap may also help them achieve compliance with privacy and security regulations, data protection laws and standards specific to the healthcare industry. These include the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), among others.

“VMware’s mission is to transform the cost, quality and delivery of patient care, and cyber threats are Public Enemy Number One in achieving this objective for our customers,” said Frank Nydam, Vice-President of Healthcare, VMware. “With the free Healthcare Security Readiness Programme, our goal is to empower our customers with the information they need to tighten their security controls and identify potential security blind spots in a way that is neither time nor cost intensive.”

“Many breaches including ransomware and cybercrime hacking are opportunistic, often affecting healthcare organizations that are least prepared,” said Jennifer Esposito, General Manager of Global Health and Life Sciences, Intel Corporation. “Results of this programme to date show a widespread of readiness for healthcare organizations across different types of breaches.

Cybercrime hacking readiness results show the least prepared healthcare organization having only 25 per cent of relevant security capabilities, while the most prepared has 88 per cent. The average cybercrime hacking readiness to date is 59 per cent, showing that the healthcare industry as a whole has much room for improvement in security and risk mitigation.”