“Do more with less” is the tagline of 2022 and 2023. Just look at the rising costs of your everyday hospital supplies like gloves and other disposable equipment, or the increasing cost of labor due to existing labor shortages which led to paying for traveling or contract nurses. We are all told to tighten the financial belt and figure out how to make do.
Do more with less, as some hospitals are asking staff to operate in negative margins. You are facing budget constraints but surely that must be the only problem you have, right? Not exactly, as healthcare breaches have consistently trended upwards for the past 10 years. Cybersecurity attacks have doubled in the last three years according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS.gov). That’s ok though, because we have security in the hospital and if we do get breached then it will probably just be ransomware - which we can pay or have our cybersecurity insurance pay. HHS.gov reported that the average ransomware cost increased 47% from 2020 to 2021, and the average downtime for a ransomware attack was 18 days. The average cost of one of these breaches is $10M in 2022. You can read the HHS.Gov report here.
“Ok, that was a long way to say I need to be concerned with security, but I already know that, so how can you help?” you probably said to yourself. Let’s talk about how you can do more with less when it comes to using Zscaler to secure your users and workloads.
A single cloud security platform
When I think of being a customer, and also in the field, I often see different teams and how they work: The security team has their set of tools, the desktop team has their tools, and then the infrastructure team has their tools. This means three potential different monitoring tools, one for network, one for endpoint, one for infrastructure. Then you have your cloud firewalls, load balancers, an anti virus, an identity solution, DLP, Advanced Threat Protection product, VPN’s, etc. Typically these are different vendors or maybe a few vendors for each different type of protection. They probably have different procurement cycles and various support end dates which means you have to be on your toes to know when to budget for all of those renewals. You may have 10 different portals for these security tools and we haven’t even touched on your other IT staff’s tools like those infrastructure monitoring tools, or endpoint monitoring.
Zscaler's cloud-native security platform offers a comprehensive suite of services, including secure web gateways, data loss prevention, firewall as a service, and advanced threat protection. By centralizing these capabilities within a single platform, healthcare organizations can eliminate the need for multiple standalone appliances, reducing the cost of hardware, maintenance, and licensing fees. Furthermore, a unified platform enables consistent policies and seamless integration across the entire organization, ensuring a cohesive security posture. Yes, I said it: You can consolidate many of the tools we just talked about all down into one single unified SaaS platform. That means you can go from managing and writing policy for multiple on-prem appliances to now no longer worrying about updates or maintenance schedules, and focus on what matters the most - writing policy to secure your users.
Traditionally, organizations have invested in a variety of security solutions from different vendors, resulting in overlapping functionality and unnecessary expenses. By rationalizing their security toolset and leveraging Zscaler's all-in-one cloud security platform, healthcare executives can eliminate redundant technologies and achieve cost efficiencies without compromising on security. This means no more point solutions, most importantly less consoles for your staff to manage. Did you push that firewall policy and other security policies to everything you needed too? Did you forget about the secondary datacenter that needed other policies based on IP? All of those types of issues are resolved with Zscaler’s cloud based platform.
Scale on demand
In addition to cost savings, Zscaler enables healthcare organizations to scale their security infrastructure more efficiently. With traditional on-premises solutions, adding new appliances or upgrading existing ones can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. On the other hand, Zscaler's cloud-based architecture allows for seamless scalability, ensuring that healthcare organizations can adapt to changing needs without disruptions or costly hardware investments. Say goodbye to that legacy VPN router you kept around that maybe hasn’t been patched in awhile because you can’t disrupt your 24/7 workers.
In an era where healthcare organizations must do more with less, Zscaler emerges as a valuable partner, enabling healthcare providers to enhance security, improve efficiency, and deliver better patient care in a cost-effective manner.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be going into more depth in each solution area of the Zero Trust Exchange platform including:
- Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) for securing access to private applications,
- Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) for secure internet and SaaS access, and
- Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX) to ensure great user experiences across all locations, devices, and apps.
We look forward to exploring how Zscaler can help you do more with less, as we have for hundreds of other customers in the healthcare sector. You can also find more information on Zscaler for Healthcare here.
