Security Operations & Optimization

Under the current threat landscape and obvious business impacts, it’s clear cybersecurity must be part of business strategy as a capability to support patient care and business continuity. Leadership must incorporate policies, practices, and technology able to protect care delivery and the availability of systems, rooted in governance to validate efficacy and efficiency.

First Health is a leader in guiding healthcare delivery organizations through targeted product and portfolio management initiatives designed to deliver safer patient care, more efficiently, as well as security leaders able to fill outstanding gaps in skills, staffing, and leadership.

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Security Operations & Optimization

Centralized Patch Management for XIoT

Most leaders greatly underestimate just how many devices are on their network – by thousands of endpoints due to the complexity of the healthcare environment, incomplete inventories, visibility challenges, and resource constraints. As a result, patch management in healthcare is inefficient and inconsistent, at best.

First Health leads the industry in the elusive centralized management of medical device endpoints with IoMT and HDO-specific solutions, strategy, and technology. Our HTM leaders for biomed and IT teams and worked with manufacturers to create a meticulous database of devices and known vulnerabilities to create a first-in-kind centralized patch management program that vastly increases visibility of vulnerabilities.

Vetted by vendors, clients can use the data to validate and confirm software updates and patches with a tailored plan of action. Clients can quickly remediate device vulnerabilities and improve resilience with fewer resources and at lower costs. Other benefits include:  

  • Staff Security Tool Training & Guidance  
  • Patch Validation  
  • Risk Reduction  
  • Faster, More Effective Vulnerability Remediation with a Patient Safety-Focus

Security Operations & Optimization

Managed Clinical Security Services

First Health offers comprehensive managed clinical security services, delivered in three levels of service to maximize budgets and support clients with internal security posture initiatives. Our biomed engineers and HTM leaders prepare, manage, and coordinate the management of clinical security platforms, tools, and processes.

First Health develops the approach, work plan, and project schedule for site survey, deployment modeling, network discovery, and architecture review and provides general and administrative user provisioning. Our SMEs build the structure based on industry-leading practices and lead conversations, provide recommendations, create documentation, and perform the configurations within the platform appropriate to policy requirements, integrations, reporting, metrics, and reconciliation. 

We provide:

  • Instructor-led, role-based training specific to general users, HTM, and network super-users 
  • Documentation of system configuration 
  • Installation, reporting, and data analysis of IoMT Security Platform deployment 

Security Operations & Optimization

Executive-Level Privacy and Security Strategy & Support

Cyber workforce shortages lead to major gaps in governance, policies, and technology. Our cyber clinicians and leaders fill workforce gaps to improve overall cyber posture & operational efficiencies, while supporting leadership with policy, strategy, and governance requirements to protect patient safety.

Our leadership services enable clients to select the appropriate amount of consulting services to meet budgetary goals, while keeping privacy and security agendas and programs moving in the right direction. 

First Health’s experienced healthcare cyber leaders support clients in need of full-time, temporary, and fractional privacy and security strategy and leadership support, as well as vCISO services. We provide: 

  • C-Suite leadership support on both an interim and long-term basis
  • Alignment of enterprise IT and digital health missives with cybersecurity and business objectives 
  • Strategic guidance and support to leadership and board
  • Guidance on governance, technology, portfolio, risk management, and risk reduction strategies 
  • Support for governance, planning, and implementations 

Security Operations & Optimization

Essential Staff Augmentation Services

While every industry is facing staffing challenges, from retention to hiring, workforce gaps in the nursing and healthcare fields can lead to burnout, operational inefficiencies, care disruptions, delays in incident response, and ineffective security policies and measures. 

First Health’s team of cyber clinicians and experienced cyber leaders fill staffing gaps to improve operational efficiencies, cyber posture, and provide added policy, strategy, and governance support.

Our augmentation services include full-time and fractional vCISO and security leader support, cyber leadership and strategy support, virtual nursing, and cyber clinician training. 

First Health also offers complete advisory services that target: 

  • Strategic Roadmap and Approach 
  • Budget Planning & Strategy 
  • Security & Protection Guidance 
  • Gap & Risk Management Support 
  • Continual Process Improvement 
  • Risk Management Program Structure Development 
  • Security Governance Formulation 
  • Essential Cybersecurity Training & Awareness Program Development 

Security Operations & Optimization

CMMS OT Security Module Implementations

Departmental silos lead to bottlenecks in the healthcare environment, which means alerts are often sent separately to business units, leading to delayed reactions or inaction. First Health’s experienced IT and biomedical security leaders work in partnership with clients throughout the project lifecycle, from planning to orchestration, to maximize quality, user adoption, timeliness, and return on investment. 

Our IT and Biomedical security leaders manage CMMS implementation and optimization leveraging quality, industry-leading practices. With the OT security implementation, all security alerts are pooled into an intelligence hub for identification, remediation, and orchestration across the enterprise.  

First Health’s CMMS OT security module implementations provide demonstrated benefits that include: 

  • Frequent, transparent communication and collaboration ensure project success 
  • Visibility into complete inventories to enable clients to assess, plan, and implement an effective OT security program
  • Dynamic, on-the-fly recording & reporting 
  • Tracking utilization of staff & activities 
  • Reduced effort required by staff 
  • Efficiency and scalability 
  • True risk management 
  • Maintained active inventory 
  • Risk reduction 
  • CMMS support
  • Alerts aligned with tools & inventory 

Security Operations & Optimization

IoMT Vulnerability Management

Ransomware remains a consistent threat to healthcare, and IoMT is the key target. While tools provide visibility and insights into threats, complicated threats require greater security resources and support. 

Partner with First Health for guidance from our cybersecurity specialists and HTM industry SMEs who understand the volume and complexities of actual risk mitigation and the difficulties unique to working with medical device vendors.

Our team provides external and internal risk reduction support and endpoint management strategy for healthcare clients, including: 

  • Identifying and documenting workflows for IoMT 
  • Creating appropriate restrictions for external network access and internal network segmentation to prevent unauthorized lateral movement within the environment 
  • Implementing a continuous patch management strategy 
  • Establishing device security controls, configuration policies, and hardening profiles for new and existing medical devices and systems 
  • Identifying agent-capable IoMT endpoints for centralized patch management, anti-malware, and access controls 
  • Prioritizing vulnerabilities based on criticality, population, and utilization 
  • Tracking high risk vulnerabilities associated with IoMT and develop model specific risk reduction plans based on device capability and manufacturer requirements and recommendations

Security Operations & Optimization

Security Application Rationalization

First Health provides complete cybersecurity stack assessment and tool rationalization to identify redundancies and gaps, maximize the value of deployed tools, ensure effective, efficient technology use, and reduce overall cybersecurity spend.

Our team performs a full assessment and penetration testing, including an assessment of functionalities and tools in all departments to identify duplicative services and right-sizing contracts to address identified overspending. Clients receive recommendations to address any identified gaps in products, licensing, and/or features needed to protect, respond, and recover in the event of an incident.    

Our assessors review any technology or process gaps to improve efficiencies, reduce risks, or lower costs, as well as:  

  • Evaluate current security application stack against latest threats, best practices, and vendor recommendations to determine the effectiveness of protecting the environment and detecting a cyber incident  
  • Review current security stack processes, systems, and tools to identify gaps or overlap, reduce barriers, and generate an informed action plan  

Clients receive a comprehensive report and an actionable roadmap customized to the environment and readily implemented.