Elisity Microsegmentation Enables St. Luke's to Secure 85,000 Medical Devices and Unlocks Clinical Innovation in 46 Days

Pennsylvania-based St. Luke's University Health Network (SLUHN) has successfully deployed an identity-based microsegmentation platform from Elisity across its 15 hospitals and over 350 outpatient sites. The deployment, which took 46 days, encompassed more than 85,000 medical devices and was completed without any outages, no changes to IP addresses, or the need for additional hardware. This initiative has effectively contained the ransomware blast radius from potentially affecting the entire organization to being limited to a single network switch.

SLUHN adopted Elisity's solution after experiencing challenges with traditional VLAN-based microsegmentation methods, which struggled to scale across its extensive network of facilities and users. The previous approach required significant coordination and manual VLAN administration, which proved to be unsustainable. Elisity's microsegmentation solution works within SLUHN's existing Cisco network infrastructure, allowing for the enforcement of granular security policies without requiring agents or network re-architecture.

The completion of the microsegmentation project included major device categories such as medical IoT, building management systems, printers, servers, and mobile devices. Following the successful implementation, SLUHN's security team approved the deployment of robotic surgical systems, enabling remote participation in live procedures, which had previously been blocked due to concerns about lateral movement risks on the unsegmented network.

David Finkelstein, Chief Information Security Officer of SLUHN, emphasized the importance of the initiative, stating, “Our mission was to make sure that if ransomware ever hit, it would be contained to a single device or switch, not take down the organization.” He acknowledged the effectiveness of Elisity’s platform, which was delivered ahead of schedule and met the organization's security needs.

James Winebrenner, CEO of Elisity, noted that the deployment has allowed SLUHN to enable clinical innovation while managing security risks. He remarked that the rapid implementation demonstrated how healthcare organizations can achieve effective security measures without disrupting patient care. The Elisity platform also integrates with SLUHN's existing security frameworks, including Palo Alto, CrowdStrike, and Active Directory, to enforce dynamic security policies in real time.