Verge Health Secures Protected Health Information on AWS Cloud With the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform

Reduces Unwanted Network Traffic by One-Third; Achieves High Availability and Supports Verge Health's Compliance as a HIPAA-Covered Entity

News provided by

Palo Alto Networks, Inc.

May 08, 2017, 08:00 ET

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Palo Alto Networks® (NYSE: PANW), the next-generation security company, today announced that Verge Health —a global provider of software as a service (SaaS) solutions for healthcare governance, risk and compliance – has selected the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform to prevent cyberattacks targeting protected health information.

Verge Health's SaaS platform, Converge, is used by more than 900 hospitals to securely work with quality and patient safety data, while protecting caregivers and their organizations against errors, adverse events and policy violations. To do this, the company required an automated and integrated cybersecurity platform, optimized for Amazon® Web Services and able to defend against threat actors in pursuit of highly coveted patient medical records and personal information. Due to the sensitive nature of this data, ensuring high availability of the security platform on AWS® was a top priority.

By selecting Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform on AWS, Verge Health now has the ability to identify and prevent known and unknown cyberthreats in the cloud. Verge Health recorded a 29 percent reduction in traffic from malicious sources attempting to gain access to its SaaS environment. Moreover, a high availability integration enabled by Cloudticity means that if an outage occurs at one AWS site, network security services resume seamlessly on another AWS site. This contributes to safeguarding the protected health information (PHI) of Verge Health's customers, as required by HIPAA.

QUOTE

"With the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform, we have gained deeper visibility into our network traffic, giving us the ability to act on threat vectors in ways we couldn't before. It's become central to our risk management strategy, used to deal with various categories of threats and severities from a more practical, strategic point of view. The platform enables us to deal with more complex threat vectors proactively and put controls in place before events occur."

− Vivek Desai, director of information security, Verge Health

The Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform, which comprises the Next-Generation Firewall, Threat Intelligence Cloud and Advanced Endpoint Protection, safely enables applications, users and content, and delivers protection against known and unknown cyberthreats. Verge Health has deployed virtualized next-generation firewalls on AWS with Palo Alto Networks security subscriptions enabled, including Threat Prevention, URL Filtering, WildFire™ cloud-based threat analysis service, and GlobalProtect™ network security for endpoints. In fact, GlobalProtect is an integral part of Verge Health's security posture, providing a globally secured entry point for employees logging in to the company's SaaS platform.

To ensure high availability and resiliency, Verge Health takes advantage of a unique capability that Cloudticity and Palo Alto Networks have delivered for other healthcare customers. Using Palo Alto Networks application programming interfaces (APIs), along with bootstrapping techniques and the AWS Lambda scripting service, Cloudticity has created (or deployed) a high availability solution that leverages the AWS environment to fail over more rapidly and seamlessly than a traditional two-device strategy.

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About Verge Health
Founded in 2001, Verge Health is a governance, risk, and compliance software company. Verge Health's software solutions enable healthcare organizations to proactively protect and defend patients, caregivers, and frontline staff against errors, adverse events, and policy violations. With over 900 facilities and 500,000 active users, the company's Converge Platform provides hospital organizations with a cross-functional, proactive surveillance tool enabling optimal quality and safety results. For more information please visit www.vergehealth.com.

About Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks is the next-generation security company, leading a new era in cybersecurity by safely enabling applications and preventing cyber breaches for tens of thousands of organizations worldwide. Built with an innovative approach and highly differentiated cyberthreat prevention capabilities, our game-changing security platform delivers security far superior to legacy or point products, safely enables daily business operations, and protects an organization's most valuable assets. Find out more at www.paloaltonetworks.com.

Palo Alto Networks and the Palo Alto Networks logo are trademarks of Palo Alto Networks, Inc. in the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other trademarks, trade names or service marks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

SOURCE Palo Alto Networks, Inc.