Case Study: Kettering Health Prescribes

XM Cyber for Healthy IT Security Environment

“I’ve never seen a tool that visually delivers as much diagnostic information on system technologies-and in a manner that is very easy to see and understand-as XM Cyber. We have immediate visibility into the state of network tools and potential misconfigurations and know what action to take.”

Michael Berry

(Director of Information Security and CISO, Kettering Health)

A major roll-out and COVID-related challenges stalled cyber hygiene

Known for brand recognition scores that consistently chart 20% above average, Kettering Health was steadily embracing layered defenses and aligning with NIST security controls to protect a distributed, hybrid network supporting 13 medical centers, over 120 outpatient locations, and more than 30,000 users when an aggressive rollout of the EPIC Electronic Health Records system fully consumed all IT resources.

With the IT team focused on implementing EPIC, cyber hygiene activities stalled. The resulting configuration drift was worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic as IT staff, again pivoting from routine maintenance, labored to address the new security challenges presented by a mobile and remote workforce of first responders.

“Tool misconfiguration frequently opens the door to attack, especially as telework surges,” explains Michael Berry, Director of Information Security and CISO at Kettering Health. “Because attackers are constantly on the lookout to exploit vulnerabilities our goal is to ensure that our security tools are providing the best possible protection.”

Complexity and scarce resources made cyber hygiene hard to reestablish

Standing in the way of ensuring IT security was in peak condition was limited visibility into the status of the security tools. Manual, ad-hoc analysis using open source and freeware technologies was time-consuming and delivered suboptimal insight into the security posture of the enterprise.

Also impeding the effort to keep the cyber hygiene ‘house in order’ was an overwhelmed IT network team with no time to dedicate to cyber hygiene. Further, with a diverse toolset, the knowledge required to maintain the tools increased.

The need to maintain business continuity while protecting against new cyberthreats made it impossible to research what needed to be done, let alone make the changes to update the congurationns. Beyond lacking the time to stay up-to-date on product features, system upgrades, and industry security controls, with everything seemingly equally urgent, the toolcustodians didn’t know where to start in remediating misconfigurations.

Kettering moved to continuous monitoring with XM Cyber

To maintain a strong security posture, Kettering Health selected XM Cyber for its ability to con tinuously monitor the IT security infrastructure and provide actionable insights and recommendations to ensure cyber hygiene , achieve compliance with regulatory frameworks, and fully optimize tool configurations across the security ecosystem.

Equally important was the platform’s ability to prioritize based on critical security controls and business impact.

How XM Cyber helped reestablish cyber hygiene

“The proper configuration of security tools plays a vital role in mitigating vulnerabilities,” continues Berry. “XM Cyber gives us the ability to be proactive and look for misconfigurations rather than wait for an incident. The simple dashboard provides instant insight into the state of the systems, potential misconfigurations, and policy failures – all mapped to critical security controls. Diagnostics, for example, that would normally require a network architect to drill down several levels are viewable at a glance on a single screen. Rather than spending time doing a root cause analysis, we can now quickly evaluate a situation analysis, and take immediate action. Not only that, XM Cyber’s simple dashboard is also invaluable in reporting to the Board on the status of information security and our progress in aligning with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.”simply rip and replace technologies. Because XM Cyber guides us in what to do to get the biggest bang for the buck, we can take a phased approach to making new investments. XM Cyber also tells you when there is a deviation from established thresholds and baselines and how to remediate it. Busy analysts can focus on high priority projects instead of attempting to stay up-to-date on system upgrades and security trends.”

The Kettering Health

• Industry: Health Care
• Locations: 130+ medical centers and outpatient facilities in Ohio
• Organization Size: 1800 physicians 14,000+ employees
• Summary: system: network gains real-time visibility into the state of network security tools and transforms cyber hygiene processes to ensure IT security provides a strong defense against cyber threatsTop- performing health system network gains real- time visibility into the state of network security tools and transforms cyber hygiene processes to ensure IT security provides a strong defense against cybert threats.