Healthcare Diagnostic Informatics Firm Ensures Security Compliance On AWS With Mission MDR Powered By Alert Logic

Executive Summary

The customer, a healthcare diagnostic informatics company, required a partner to fully secure sensitive client data across its AWS Cloud and on-prem environments, and to deliver HIPAA compliance and SOC-as-a-service. Mission introduced Mission MDR – its Alert Logic-powered solution for fully managed 24/7 threat detection and incident response – to provide thorough threat intelligence, intrusion detection, and dedicated security expertise. As a result, Mission now assures the customer’s ongoing regulatory compliance and proactively mitigates any potential threats before harm is done.‍

The Challenge

As a business in the healthcare industry handling lab test patients’ sensitive personal identifiable information (PII), the customer required airtight data security that would continually stand up to HIPAA compliance requirements.

The customer was working with a SOC partner and became dissatisfied. It wanted to change course and migrate to an AWS partner that could provide urgently needed SOC-as-a-Service. The strategy would ensure its infrastructure would be more secure, and would provide the company with continuous scanning and intrusion detection protocols to meet all compliance requirements. Core security activities would need to include network monitoring and vulnerability scanning to secure infrastructure against threats. Additionally, the customer wanted to review its AWS environment for cost optimization opportunities and evaluate a premium support tier with better SLAs, since doing so would enable the firm to focus more on their sophisticated diagnostics to drive business growth.

Why AWS?

The customer was drawn to AWS for its security features – particularly its cohesive data security and access management controls. The fact that AWS centralizes billing is also appreciated. The customer utilizes AWS exclusively for its cloud needs, alongside existing on-prem infrastructure.

Why Mission?

The customer selected Mission because of its proven experience working with other healthcare-industry customers and for how well Mission’s 24/7 SOC offering (that combines security analysts with robust Alert Logic tooling) aligned with the customer’s requirements. Mission established early trust and credibility with the customer throughout several conversations prior to officially engaging, with Mission proving its expertise, capabilities, and approach across security, data analytics and cost optimization. The customer also reported confidence in selecting Mission because of its AWS Healthcare and AWS Life Sciences Competency statuses and because of the AWS partner’s deep and demonstrated alignment with AWS best practices around security and cost efficiency.

Strategy and Solution 

Mission implemented its MDR solution, which provides the expertise and resources necessary for 24/7 monitoring and fully managed threat detection and incident response.

Mission MDR is powered by Alert Logic, a powerful MDR platform purpose-built for the AWS Cloud. Alert Logic delivers threat intelligence, intrusion detection, and dedicated security teams that serve as the backbone of Mission MDR’s comprehensive threat detection and response capabilities. Automated threat signature updates are based on the latest telemetry data available, and analyzed by Alert Logic's security experts. Around-the-clock access to Alert Logic's SOC is available to assist with security incident response. These safeguards enable HIPAA compliance, ensuring tremendous peace of mind for the customer from regulatory and reputational perspectives. Mission takes point in addressing all security alerts, offloading initial incident response, investigation, and simple resolution from the customer's internal staff.

Backed by Alert Logic, Mission MDR vigilantly protects the customer’s AWS environment and on-prem connections from attacks. Mission leverages EC2 autoscaling groups to detect any intrusions to the customer’s systems and automatically trigger security alerts. Alert Logic safeguards the customer’s web applications, and has automated rules in place to forward notifications directly to Mission’s ticketing system. The result is rapid customized responses that enable an optimal security posture, mitigating potential threats and setting the customer’s previous security concerns at ease.

Outcome and Results

With Mission MDR securing the customer’s AWS and on-prem environments, perceived threats are regularly detected and mitigated. The company’s systems are fully HIPAA compliant, and have been successfully protected against all potential data breaches or major security incidents. In the past month, for example, 58 security incidents have been detected: 51 were filtered by Alert Logic, and seven were responded to by the Mission support team.

Mission MDR has thwarted brute force attacks against the customer, and manages network control lists to render malicious traffic harmless. Analysis of AWS and on-prem logs has enabled decisive action to stop incoming threats. As the first contact for security alerts, Mission takes the initiative in providing all required security actions on the customer’s behalf, including hands-on-keyboard work whenever necessary. With this comprehensive Mission-led security in place, the customer has complete confidence in the integrity of its systems and safety of its sensitive data, freeing up more technical resources to focus on business growth initiatives.

Next Steps

Going forward, Mission will continually review the customer’s security posture and best practices alongside the company’s internal team, actively maintaining the high level of effective safeguards currently protecting its systems and sensitive healthcare data.

AWS Services

• EC2
• AWS Auto Scaling
• AWS Identity & Access Management
• AWS CloudTrail
  

Third-Party Integrations

• Alert Logic