Healthcare is one of the largest industries on the planet and one of the biggest in the United States. Healthcare accounts for a large number of organizations and workers, and as such, touches virtually every person as a consumer/user. As a result, MSPs are often targeting this massive industry where IT infrastructure and security are a major issue. In NetDiligence’s analysis of 1,201 cyber insurance claims from 2013 to 2017 for example, healthcare accounted for 17% of the total claims submitted, averaging $555k per claim. In this MSP-focused article, we walk through a healthcare go-to-market strategy and look to help MSPs meet the needs of the market.
Healthcare Challenges
Healthcare organizations share a wide range of challenges because of their focus on patient data and efficiency. Some of these critical challenges are listed below:
Compliance
Most health care organizations around the world are subject to tight regulatory oversight. In the United States, this statute is called HIPAA and it has what is called the HIPAA Security Rule to focus on electronic protection of personal health information. This regulation is wide ranging and covers topic such as access control, data storage, auditing, and more. Both small and large health care organizations are subject to this statute, making compliance an important challenge that MSPs can address.
Efficiency
Healthcare organizations are looking to make their healthcare providers far more efficient with technology. From the use of tablets to web applications to biomedical devices to automatically collect data, there is a tremendous opportunity to leverage technology to make the organization more efficient. Most healthcare organizations are extremely disciplined in their approach to technology, often taking a skeptical stance. ROI and total cost of ownership analyses are critical to share when supporting an initiative in addition, of course, to validating the the technology performs as intended.
Cost Containment
The rising cost of healthcare is putting pressure on the entire system. Health care providers need to keep their costs down to pass along those savings to their customers. Cost-effective IT solutions that can more than pay for themselves quickly can be a valuable addition to an IT strategy.
The healthcare industry is wide and there are many other specific challenges that organizations face. Developing further assumptions can help an MSP better understand their health care clients.
Healthcare Solutions
As MSPs focus on solving these and other challenges for healthcare organizations, there are a few categories of solutions that can be helpful.
Integration and Implementation
Many healthcare organizations are short on IT resources and often need help with various projects. For those organizations that do focus on integration and implementation of solutions, that can be a significant opportunity for MSPs. Often, we see MSPs build a complete solution where they implement and then support the ongoing management of the solution. Even if there aren’t on-going services available, MSPs can build expertise in particular solutions focused on healthcare and find organizations that need those.
Managed Services
As mentioned earlier, healthcare IT organizations are usually either short-staffed or it may be completely outsourced. The result is that managed services that outsource the ongoing maintenance and management of IT solutions are being purchased en masse from healthcare organizations. These managed services could be network or endpoint management, storage/data services, and others.
Security and Compliance
With compliance and security issues driving a significant portion of what healthcare organizations need to accomplish in IT, the opportunity for MSPs to support these initiatives is large. Some of the primary areas of interest could include data and identity security, device and application compliance, and network protection.
With a little time and focus, MSPs can develop healthcare-focused solutions that can solve core issues for healthcare IT organizations.
Selling JumpCloud
JumpCloud’s Directory-as-a-Service® platform is uniquely positioned to support MSPs in their effort to work with healthcare organizations. JumpCloud’s cloud directory service has been evaluated by an independent firm for compliance with respect to HIPAA’s Security Rule. Beyond the compliance aspect, an MSP can leverage the cloud directory platform for the following area applicable to healthcare organizations:
Identity Security
At the core of JumpCloud’s platform is a cloud identity provider. As a modern take on Active Directory, JumpCloud’s cloud directory securely manages and connects users to their systems, applications, files, and networks regardless of platform, protocol, provider, and location. Further, with JumpCloud’s focus on security, healthcare organizations can leverage one-way hashed and salted passwords, password complexity management, SSH key management, and more.
Multi-factor Authentication
A core function of Directory-as-a-Service is the implementation of system-based and application-level multi-factor authentication (often called 2FA as well). MSPs can dramatically step-up security when accessing systems and applications.
Endpoint Security and Policies
Locking down systems (Windows, macOS, Linux) for user access and security settings is a critical initiative for MSPs for their healthcare clients. Policies such as full disk encryption (FDE), screen saver lock, OS patching, disabling USB ports, and many others can be enforced to ensure each system is secure.
Network Segmentation
An important part of healthcare organizations is ensuring that only the right people are accessing the network and ultimately ePHI. Leveraging JumpCloud’s cloud RADIUS and dynamic VLAN assignment can be a valuable approach to stepping up network protection.
Connect with Our Partner Support Team to Learn More
If you’d like to understand more about how you can form an effective healthcare go-to-market strategy with JumpCloud Directory-as-a-Service, feel to free to send our Partner Support team a message. Our team can work with yours to produce a co-marketing campaign for your clients, create joint set-up calls, or help conduct webinars.
JumpCloud’s Partner Program empowers IT Service Providers with central identity management from the cloud. Fine-tuned for service providers with cloud security offerings and clients transitioning to the cloud, Directory-as-a-Service can be easily bundled at the center of any product stack to make your business, and your clients’ businesses, as efficient and scalable as possible. Make Work Happen™ for your clients while you make more growth for your business. Our team can work with your to produce a marketing campaign for your clients, create joint set-up calls, or help conduct webinars.