Summary: Because healthcare has such tremendous disparity in endpoints and because healthcare data has become so valuable for hackers, endpoint security in these environments is critical. In this short video podcast, we speak to IGEL and learn why their architecture is uniquely built for these types of environments.
Transcript:
Mike: Hi. I'm Mike Matchett with Small World, Big Data. I'm here today with Simon Clephan, who's the VP of Strategic Alliances and Business Development with IGEL and we're going to talk a little bit about IGEL, a leader in the endpoint management business. Talking about what IGEL's doing in the healthcare vertical. Welcome to the show, Simon.
Simon: Thank you very much, Mike. It's an absolute delight to be here today.
Mike: First, just give us a real quick overview of who IGEL is and what you guys are doing in healthcare.
Simon: Okay. IGEL is a German endpoint management company. Basically, we've been in this business about 20 years and what we're seeing as we've been growing in the United States for the last couple of years is a massive adoption in the healthcare space. It's a very exciting time for us. Last week was HIMSS, the Health Information Management Systems and Services Show - big show for us. And we were there with CITRIX demonstrating some of our new capabilities. Exciting times. We've got a lot of different customers using this.
I think at this point I'd love to show you a quick slide. I don't know if we can pull that into the session, but this slide just shows you the epic size of the ... No pun intended ... The size of the problem that healthcare customers are facing. There are so many pieces to the VDI stack for healthcare and we're just one important part of that. But when you get it right, you deliver for the doctors performance and security and that's what it's all about. That's what IGEL's obsessed with - performance and security for doctors, nurses, and healthcare professionals.
Mike: Let's just back up just a little second. So, in the VDI space it's not enough simply to deliver a desktop, especially when you're in a critical environment like healthcare. You've got tremendous regulatory concerns on the IT side, tremendous paranoia. I think we talked before you were mentioning about an attack vector, particularly at the tremendous number of endpoints. And then because it's healthcare and doctors and nurses are trying to deliver that medical service to people who need it immediately, you've got a lot of real time concerns; a lot of performance concerns. In a way, healthcare's kind of like this leading ... I don't want tot say bellwether, but this leading use-case, the most demanding VDI use-case.
Simon: I believe you're absolutely right. There's things like security requirements. HIPA would be ... You know, the management of information is very important in the healthcare space. Beyond that, doctors and nurses, they don't care about security. What they're obsessed with is how can I give the patient a better experience. For them, seconds matter. The critical thing is your ability to pull up the record, get to the right X-ray, get to the right information fast with the healthcare applications. VDI is an important way of delivering that because VDI delivers this ... You know, it's very cost effective and it's a very secure way of delivering the information but it has to be performant. So, doctors and nurses obsessed with performance, IT obsessed with security.
An interesting study I just read recently. On the dark web, bad guys will pay $50 for a full healthcare record for somebody. As opposed to on the dark web, typically a credit card information will sell for about one dollar. So, guess what? The bad guys are going after health information. It's a fascinating combination of ... Well, they go where the money is and it's our job.
Mike: It makes me think I'm in the wrong business sometimes wen I see things like that. It's like, wow, healthcare. Somebody would care about my healthcare enough to pay 50 bucks for it but, yeah.
So, if you get it right in the healthcare industry; if you can solve these performances challenges and security challenges in healthcare it really sets you up to say hey, we're so much better than other solutions that are out there that are just meeting some very lower standards for performance and security task-based worker kind of stuff. You guys are saying no, it's mission critical worker stuff. It's mission critical applications. It's highly secure, highly regulated environments and if you do it right there, you can do it right anywhere pretty much.
Simon: I believe that is the case and we certainly see that, you know? We extend from this into finance and banking. We're doing a lot of work with the government agencies and things like that, but healthcare's where we're ... Well, it's our biggest single market at the moment and it's an environment where it's very easy to work together with the IT folks, with the doctors. The nice thing is, everybody's sort of in sync working together to deliver a better performance and a more secure performance. Everybody understands the issues and there's not all this secrecy about it.
One of the nice things I like with working with hospitals is one person will tell another hospital exactly what they're doing, how it's working and how successful because everybody benefits then whereas it's not a competitive advantage. Whereas in banking, you know they don't want anybody to know what else they're doing because that's giving away secrets. Whereas in healthcare, it's all about patient care. How do we do better patient care? We keep them secure and we make sure the doctors and the nurses get the performance they need. It's great to work with those guys.
Mike: Alright. We don't have a whole lot of time here, but give me just a quick overview of the unique IP you guys are bringing to the table to deliver this performance in security.
Simon: Classically, the problem is how do we deliver security and performance at the end point. IGEL believes the best way to do that is with the Linux operating system. Windows is an operating system that belongs in the data center. That's where these big applications like Epic and Serna are running. What you want on the endpoint is the Linux operating system. The Linux operating system is a layer by layer secure operating system so we can guarantee as it builds nothing goes wrong.
It's performance because it only does the few things that you need it to do. It doesn't waste a lot of time doing a bunch of other things. And we can also tie it in with all the devices. In the healthcare space you've got to be integrated with a single sign on device. You've got to have a signature pad for prescriptions, you've got to have a headset for the doctor to dictate, you've got to have the dictation software from Dragon Medical Dictate, you've got to have the foot pedal so that the transcriber can take the doctor's information and write it into the medical records. It all goes on and on. That you can do with a Linux operating system better than you can do with any other operating system and we can make it perform and we can be 100% secure. That's why we're winning in healthcare.
Mike: And when you say Linux, you really mean the IGEL OS version of Linux, right? It's not just your normal-
Simon: It's not just ... You're absolutely right.
Mike: It's your version that you've modified. Okay.
Simon: Thanks. It is definitely the IGEL OS version of it that enables us to do these things.
Mike: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome, Simon. Well, thank you for giving us this little insight into the healthcare and desktop use-case today. I appreciate you spending some time with us.
Simon: It's been a pleasure. Thanks for your time and looking forward to seeing you on the road out there somewhere.
Mike: Alright. And this is Mike Matchett from Small World, Big Data. Thanks for watching and we hope to bring you some more coverage of IGEL in the future. Take care.
Simon: Thanks, Mike.
