Royal Flying Doctor Service Secures Users and Data in the Remote Areas of the Outback

First is the challenge of protecting remote and cloud-based systems. “The digital security of patient information is critical—privacy is part of the patient care we provide,” Carey says.

In addition to the fundamental responsibility to protect patients, “the RFDS is absolutely iconic,” he notes. “That puts a heavy responsibility on us, as technologists, to make sure the environment is safe. We have a reputation to protect and can’t let a cyberattack erode trust with the public.”

And third, a successful attack might undermine the availability of the digital services that RFDS staff need to do their jobs. “The stability, resiliency, and integrity of our systems have a major impact on our ability to provide medical care,” Carey says.

“The Netskope platform does a lot of different things,” Carey says. “We look at all parts of the network, and user and data flows. Netskope gives us visibility into the cloud services our staff use. It also gives us the ability to finetune which services and solutions are trusted, and which shouldn’t be available. It’s part of our DLP program to ensure we don’t have data loss, and we use it to ring-fence critical data.”

The SWG integrates directly with RFDS’s security information and event management (SIEM) system. “That gives us another dimension of user activity, [so we can] ensure that activity on their account and on their data is normal,” Carey says.

For end users, the solution is transparent. “We get no complaints from the field,” he says. “Our clinicians and nurses don’t have to think about security. They use the systems they need to interact with, while Netskope is in the background, protecting the data and ensuring it’s not lost or leaked.”

He believes the enhanced security for all web traffic has made the RFDS stronger and more resilient. It has also improved his organization’s flexibility.

“In our journey to 100 years,” Carey concludes, “we have a strategy to continue to digitally innovate. Netskope allows us to be more agile in the technologies we provide to our clinicians and flight nurses. We know that they can safely use cloud-based services, and we can protect their data, regardless of the use case. We keep our users safe so they can deliver patient care.”