The healthcare industry stands at the intersection of innovation and vulnerability, with cyber threats escalating in frequency and sophistication. Joel Burleson-Davis, SVP of Worldwide Engineering, Cyber at Imprivata, believes the way forward lies in transforming how healthcare organizations approach identity security and broader cybersecurity challenges. From embracing passwordless technology to preparing for nation-state threats targeting critical infrastructure, the stakes have never been higher.

Let’s face it: passwords are exhausting.

We’re required to change them frequently (and seemingly always at the most inconvenient times). Also, pass “words” have evolved into lengthy, complex pass “phrases.” Trying to remember them is a mental strain, but it certainly beats the Herculean task of trying to reset your password.

HealthEast Care System, the non-profit healthcare organization located in St. Paul, Minnesota, focuses on giving their patients safe access to their health information, reliable service, and affordable, high-quality care. With a desire to successfully execute their mission, HealthEast recognized a need for improving security, enhancing clinician efficiency, and providing a more positive patient experience.

One conundrum that healthcare faces while it tries to create and adopt best-of-breed technologies that can make a clinician’s job more efficient while making data more transparent to patients is that these patients double as consumers. They’re used to a certain level of access with their mobile devices or social media platforms and expect healthcare to fall in line with expectations of other industries.

When you’re the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of a medium-sized healthcare organization with 150 beds, an IT staff of 15 and 1,000 desktops to manage (many being outpatient), achieving equity between security and efficiency can be a challenge at times. Frank Fear, CIO of Memorial Hospital in Michigan, has to contend with keeping application up to date, using virtualization to improve efficiency and uses single sign on (SSO) to help with authentication.