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May 17, 2018
Thales, a leader in critical information systems, cybersecurity and data security, is providing hardware-based encryption technology to North York General Hospital (NYGH) to facilitate the secure exchange of information between the hospital’s physicians, healthcare staff and patients. The resulting digital service supplements in-person consultations with online communications using PCs and mobile devices, enabling more timely and convenient interactions between patients and hospital staff.According to the 2017 Thales Data Threat Report, Healthcare Edition, 66% of global healthcare IT respondents experienced a data breach in the past. It was therefore vital to this project that the security architecture ensured information remained confidential and completely unintelligible for everyone other than the message sender and the legitimate recipient.The solution provides end-to-end protection of traffic while simultaneously enabling the use of a wide range of devices increasingly common within the healthcare industry – including patient-owned mobile phones, medical appliances and ultimately, IoT devices. With a goal of identifying a strategy that allowed for growth, flexibility and privacy, NYGH selected IDENTOS, a global provider of encryption services and solutions, and a Thales technology partner, to provide the security platform needed to run the service.IDENTOS offers an innovative key management technology specifically optimized for mobile application integrations to protect data and transactions on mobile devices. The IDENTOS tech stack integrates in a few hours with full service modules for application anti-tampering, data encryption, digital identity, Fast Identity Online (FIDO) authentication and end-to-end secure chat.The IDENTOS encryption-as-a-service subscription platform is integrated with Thales nShield Connect hardware security modules (HSMs) to protect and manage cryptographic keys within a hardened device. nShield Connect HSMs support some of the highest cryptographic transaction rates in the industry, making them ideal for the cyberattack-prone healthcare sector.Sumon Acharjee, CIO of North York General Hospital says:“After careful consideration, we opted to add the IDENTOS solution to our security infrastructure toolbox to provide more flexibility in providing modern, encryption-based strategy driven by Thales and IDENTOS. These two companies have the extensive, proven experience necessary for creating a solution that embraces growth, flexibility and accounts for today’s mobile-savvy users.”Peter Galvin, VP of strategy for Thales e-Security says:“By embracing a solution that delivers security and trust in data without impacting business agility, NYGH is implementing an advanced data security solution to ensure data protection and privacy as they digitally transform their business. This digital transformation, increasingly marked by advanced technologies such as mobile and IoT devices, demands a more thoughtful, data-centric strategy – and it’s one that we, along with our partner IDENTOS, are proud to protect.”Thales nShield Connect is certified to FIPS 140-2 standard defined by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Canadian Security Establishment (CSE). The Thales HSM generates the NIST required Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) keys utilized by the IDENTOS data encryption platform.Read about how Thales and IDENTOS helped secure NYGH in our case study.