Best PAM solution for healthcare: One Identity Safeguard

Healthcare is a prime target for cybercriminals because it holds patient records and billing data that can be abused or sold. Hospitals and clinics also rely on systems that must stay online, which puts pressure on teams during an attack. The average cost of a healthcare data breach is now around 11 million dollars, which is higher than any other sector. This makes security failures especially costly for patient safety and daily operations.

To reduce this risk, healthcare organizations must put strong controls around who can access critical systems and how that access is used. One important category of tools that helps with this is privileged access management (PAM).

In this article, we will explain why PAM is essential for healthcare environments and why One Identity Safeguard stands out as an ideal PAM solution for the healthcare sector.

Privileged access management controls and monitors high-level access to critical healthcare systems and infrastructure. It ensures that elevated/administrative access is given only when needed and removed once the task is finished.

Why healthcare organizations need PAM

• Clinical systems like EHRs require strict control to prevent unauthorized changes to patient records
• Medical devices and supporting servers often run with elevated access that must be tightly managed
• Healthcare staff work across shifts so temporary access control is a given
• Third party vendors need access for system maintenance without getting exposure to patient data
• Compliance with regulations such as HIPAA requires detailed access tracking and audit logs

Healthcare security challenges without PAM

• Shared admin accounts make it impossible to trace actions back to a specific clinician or technician
• Standing privileged access increases the risk of ransomware spreading across clinical systems
• When staff leave or change roles, delayed removal of their access leads to needless data exposure
• Without session visibility, it becomes difficult (if not impossible) to investigate patient-impacting incidents

One Identity Safeguard is a full privileged access management platform designed to secure high risk accounts in large and complex healthcare environments. It helps hospitals, clinics, health networks and medical vendors reduce unnecessary access by granting it only when needed and keeping strong visibility across hybrid IT environments.

Core capabilities and architecture

• Automatic discovery of privileged accounts across Active Directory, servers, databases, and connected medical infrastructure
• Secure credential vaulting that stores admin passwords in a hardened and isolated system
• Time limited privileged access with approval flows based on clinical roles and internal policies
• Complete session recording to capture every action taken during privileged access sessions
• Live monitoring and alerts that flag risky behavior and allow sessions to be blocked when needed
• Tamper resistant audit logs stored in signed formats to support healthcare audits and incident reviews
• Central management of sudo access with unified reporting for Linux based clinical and backend systems

Healthcare use cases

• Hospitals: Safeguard helps hospitals control administrator access to electronic health record systems and clinical databases
• Healthcare Providers and Clinics: Large provider networks use Safeguard to manage privileged access across scheduling systems and patient portals without disrupting daily clinical workflows.
• Medical Billing and Claims Platforms: Organizations handling insurance claims and billing data use Safeguard to limit access to sensitive financial and patient data, while safely managing third party and vendor access

Enterprise-grade centralized vaulting plays a key role for healthcare organizations by:

• Keeping privileged credentials out of scripts and manual records that are common sources of exposure in hospitals
• Reducing the risk of password reuse across clinical systems and admin platforms
• Limiting who can see or use high risk credentials, even within IT and security teams
• Automatically rotating passwords so long-lived access does not build up over time
• Supporting strict access controls for third party vendors who need temporary system access
• Creating a single source of truth for privileged credentials across EHR systems, dashboards, databases and supporting services

Healthcare security teams can use Safeguard to enforce the principle of least privilege. For example, they can:

1. Grant clinicians temporary elevated access to clinical systems only when patient care tasks require it, instead of permanent admin rights
2. Limit IT administrators to specific systems such as EHR platforms or imaging servers, rather than broad access across the environment
3. Provide support staff with restricted privileges that allow troubleshooting without exposing patient records or system level controls
4. Assign short-term access to biomedical engineers for device maintenance, with automatic removal once the task is complete

Safeguard can also help security teams spot early warning signs of ransomware activity and insider misuse. As an example, consider this scenario:

1. A hospital IT administrator logs into a server that hosts part of the electronic health record system late at night, outside normal maintenance hours.
2. Safeguard triggers the approval workflow before allowing the session to start.
3. Once access is granted, the session is fully recorded and monitored in real time.
4. During the session, Safeguard notices a sequence of commands that are not typical for routine system checks and matches known ransomware preparation patterns.
5. An alert is sent to the security team immediately.
6. Based on the policy in place, Safeguard pauses the session and blocks further commands while the team reviews the activity.

This preemptive protection allows the hospital to stop a potential attack before something serious happens, like patient records getting encrypted or clinical services being disrupted.

A reliable PAM solution like One Identity Safeguard can be a game-changer for healthcare organizations looking to enhance their security posture. It has all the controls needed to protect high risk access, reduce human error and keep close watch over privileged activity across the entire digital healthcare ecosystem. This is why we recommend One Identity Safeguard.