Culinda
Delivering IoT Security for Healthcare Providers

IoMT (Internet of Medical Things) is transforming the healthcare industry. The technology is integrated into many healthcare IT systems and equipment to improve the overall care delivery, treatment options, and reduce the cost of care significantly. Though adopting IoT in healthcare has many advantages, it has also opened healthcare organizations up to increased cyberattacks. Also, healthcare providers often under spend on security or think of security as an afterthought, spending just 3 percent of their IT budget contrary to the mandated 10 percent as per SANS Institute, a cooperative research and education organization. Combine this with the value of Healthcare data—with PHI and PII information—in the black market, and healthcare providers become an attractive and soft target for cybercriminals and nation state sponsored cyber-attacks. Coming to the rescue of healthcare providers is Culinda, a healthcare security firm built by healthcare security professionals. The company delivers healthcare cybersecurity, end-to-end secure medical device management with complete visibility for all connected medical devices in an IoMT ecosystem.

"Knowing where your medical devices are and what they are doing is half the battle," says Uma Mahesh Reddy, COO, CISO, and Co-founder Culinda. Any healthcare provider with medical devices must first locate and identify all devices it owns, operates, and connects to its network. To this end, Culinda provides deep insight into where the biomedical assets are located, at any given moment, in addition to how they are communicating, giving healthcare providers peace of mind. "Most of the existing solutions in the market offered only partial visibility into IoMT ecosystem, with gaps between identification and remediation of cyber-attacks. So, we came up with the only blockchain-based IoMT security platform in the market. With our platform, cyber attackers will never go unnoticed whether they attack from outside your organization or inside," he adds.

Culinda's namesake IoMT security platform leverages artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and human intelligence to fingerprint and detect any anomalies in devices protecting them against cyberattacks and other risks. "We understand that AI and ML alone are not effective in efficiently securing the devices. When the platform struggles to understand a certain situation, it alerts the cybersecurity team and provides insights to them so that the appropriate action is taken," explains Reddy. The platform continually monitors the devices' behavior and predicts how they are expected to function in different scenarios to detect and respond to cyberattacks in real-time. In a nutshell, Culinda helps prevent threats before they cause harm to healthcare providers.

With our platform, cyber attackers will never go unnoticed whether they attack from outside your organization or inside

Besides, it registers devices on blockchain to track and manage them throughout their lifecycle. This helps healthcare with accurate compliance data to make it available to regulatory bodies, hedge fund firms, and accreditation institutions.

Culinda is aware of connected medical devices being several years old before they are even introduced into healthcare operations. As a result, the software and firmware they possess are outdated and unpatched, easily leading to cyberattacks. To this end, our company helps clients protect the existing IT infrastructure without forcing them to upgrade to new costly systems. For instance, the healthcare providers that have devices running on Windows 7 can delay their upgradation to the latest platform for another couple of years, and Culinda completely protects them for this period. The company can then roll the systems out in a phased-out approach, which leaves the hospitals saving millions. Culinda has accomplished such savings for healthcare organizations across the country.

Culinda's co-founders bring decades of healthcare IT experience in cybersecurity using their expertise with hospital IoMT and intricate knowledge of healthcare system-wide IT operations and maintenance. "Our vast experience and understanding of the healthcare industry and cybersecurity is what differentiates Culinda from the rest," states Reddy.

With their recent acquisition in progress, Culinda has now evolved into securing all IoT, ICS/SCADA, and Autonomous Vehicles, along with IoMT. The new acquisition has expanded the number of device types that can be secured, by Culinda, out-of-the-box to over 500 million different device types. Being a security focused platform and services company, Culinda’s acquisitions are focused on becoming the best in the industry at security architecture, device discovery, reverse engineering, firmware/malware, and security testing. The company is very pleased with this latest acquisition and was happy to announce their expansion and reach into autonomous vehicles, telecom, and other IoT enabled industries. "We also want to provide R&D services to these industries," concludes Reddy.