How Jefferson Health enhanced cybersecurity via its cloud transformation
The cybersecurity mantra at Jefferson Health is “if we can’t do it well, we’re not going to do it” says Mark Odom, CISO of the Philadelphia-based healthcare organization. Such an approach has proved integral to Jefferson Health’s fast-tracked transition to a cloud-first, remote model to meet the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In fact, by putting cybersecurity at the fore of its cloud innovations, Odom believes the hospital has installed a more efficient, agile, and risk-focused security approach to protect is 34,000 employees. “Our strategy has been cloud-focused for a few years, but a lot of our platforms are very large and normally you don’t move them over a period of months, you move them over years. The pandemic accelerated things of course.” Indeed, the hospital’s vast databases span healthcare, education, and research operations with some reliant on legacy, end-of-life systems that needed shifting to the cloud for greater flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and security.
