Medical Device Company Advances Healthcare & Data Security in the Cloud with the Help of Laminar
A Case Study
For this global leader in healthcare technology, advancing the field of healthcare goes hand in hand with being a good data steward.
Their data-driven interconnected medical devices collect patient health data in the cloud, where Laminar’s agile data security for cloud helps the organization meet HIPAA and other regulatory requirements. This ensures the data’s safe keeping — while empowering their data scientists and engineers who are redefining what’s possible in healthcare technology.
Challenge
Manual Processes and Lack of Visibility into a Growing Environment
“We were using manual processes to make sure data wasn’t where it shouldn’t be or being accessed by the wrong parties. As the company started to grow rapidly, the data did too, and our processes couldn’t keep up or give us assurance that data was continually protected,” explains the MedTech company’s R&D Group Leader.
With data growth came new opportunities to innovate, which resulted in increasingly sensitive projects — and a greater need for complete data visibility and control. “We started working with more data and, on top of that, the team had grown so more people were handling the data and increasing the risk of mistakes. It was critical to understand what data was where,” the leader said.
“We started working with more data and, on top of that, the team had grown so more people were handling the data and increasing the risk of mistakes. It was critical to understand what data was where״
The MedTech company began looking for a data security solution that would provide a full understanding of data stores, including RDS, DynamoDB and non-schematic (unstructured) data stores like S3 buckets. It was also important that the product gave the research and development teams the flexibility to customize data types so they could manage uniquely relevant data in addition to PHI and PII. Finally, they wanted a solution that would automatically alert the team of policy violations and wouldn’t introduce additional risk by sending data out of their cloud environment.
Solution
Continuous, Automated Data Protection from Laminar
Laminar, a leading data security posture management (DSPM) solution, fulfilled all of the these requirements. As a DSPM platform, Laminar autonomously and continuously discovers, classifies, and protects all known and unknown data across all cloud platforms. Plus, Laminar provides visibility into cloud data without impacting cloud performance or removing any data from the cloud environment.
Upon connecting to the company’s cloud environment, Laminar automatically discovered all data — including shadow data — residing in the AWS environment. The DSPM solution then identified and classified sensitive data and built a comprehensive data catalog. The data was then prioritized according to its risk profile based on sensitivity level, security posture, volume, and exposure. Laminar continuously and automatically updates the data asset inventory and data context as new data stores are added, without any effort required from the company.
“Laminar immediately gave us significantly more visibility into our data, including data that hadn’t been touched in a few years”
“Laminar immediately gave us significantly more visibility into our data, including data that hadn’t been touched in a few years,” says the rep. The team was able to confidently archive and delete data, reducing cloud costs and the scope of the organization’s data attack surface.
Results
Assurance of Data Protection Enables Agility
In addition to enabling the company to customize data types, Laminar enforces data security and privacy policies. The platform continuously monitors new and modified data stores against the stated security posture and regulations, and will send an alert along with remediation guidelines when policies are violated. The company can rest assured that its data is continuously protected.
“We no longer spend weeks manually auditing for policy compliance or worry about what’s happening to data between audits,” says their spokesperson. “The teams can easily get more information about where the data is and what data is stored where.”
“We no longer spend weeks manually auditing for policy compliance or worry about what’s happening to data between audits. The teams can easily get more information about where the data is and what data is stored where”
Laminar’s DSPM solution is used by the MedTech company’s engineering, DevOps, and data science teams. They have been able to continue to innovate and move quickly, even as the organization’s general cloud security posture has improved. “Laminar gives us the confidence to be agile because we know everyone is using data in accordance with our policies.”
