News
PDX Protects Health Data From Cyberattacks With LightCyber Behavioural Attack Detection
October 2016 by Marc Jacob
LightCyber announced that PDX has selected the LightCyber Magna™ Behavioural Attack Detection platform to proactively protect customer privacy and patient information. The solution provides PDX with visibility to see the operational activities of a potential attacker and curtail a data breach or prevent damage. Adding these detection capabilities puts PDX at the forefront of the healthcare market for its advanced security to protect the information and trust of its customers and the fidelity of its business.
Founded in 1985, PDX and its suite of products and services keep pharmacies efficient, competitive and compliant with industry standards. Sixty pharmacy chains – including drug stores, supermarkets, and mass merchants – and more than 350 independent pharmacies in the United States, representing 10,000 individual pharmacies, use PDX software to fill, bill and track prescriptions. With the increase in data breaches among health care organisations and the recognised value of patient data, the PDX team knew it needed to be aggressive in detecting and responding to potential threats.
“I needed to cover all the shortcomings of preventative security,” said John Woods, vice president of Information Security, PDX. “LightCyber Magna detects malicious anomalies by profiling users and devices, so it is based on a model of known good rather than the typical security model of known bad. It gives us a high degree of accuracy and precision so we respond swiftly and surgically.”
According to Woods, he and his team originally considered 15 different products, but narrowed the competitive field to four products which he evaluated in the PDX network to learn what they could discover. Only LightCyber Magna offered the deep visibility of the network combined with on-demand agentless endpoint visibility Woods was looking for, and during the test Magna caught malicious activity not seen by other solutions, including a keylogger in operation, he said. Magna points directly to an issue that needs immediate attention.
“With Magna the alert is real,” said Woods. “In security you get so much data coming at you it’s difficult to see what are the real issues. Other solutions provide a lot of generalised warnings that are really not actionable. LightCyber shows us what we really need to look at. The needle LightCyber finds is an actionable thing, not just another piece of straw in a tall stack.”
The Magna platform uses behavioural profiling to learn what is normal on the network and endpoints, and thereby detect anomalous that are indicative of an attack. These behaviours can be identified early to reduce attacker dwell time and curtail attack activity. Magna also identifies harmful activity from insiders—rogue or unaware employees or contractors. Magna presents a small number of actionable alerts with supporting contextual and investigative details to greatly enhance the efficiency of a security operations team in its detection and remediation operations.
Secure Data Solutions played an instrumental role in the selection and deployment of the Magna platform following its model of “Simplify, Secure, Sustain.”
