Chapters Health System is a healthcare organization based in Temple Terrance, Florida. Chapters Health specializes in providing hospice and home care, palliative medicine and grief services for those affected by advanced age and chronic illness. Additionally, Chapters Health is the largest not-for-profit, chronic illness management and end-of-life care organization in the country.
Mike Parkin, Director of IT Security/CISO, oversees and manages IT security solutions and vendor risk assessments for the company and its affiliates.
The Challenge
One of Chapters Health’s security team’s main priorities is to perform vendor risk assessments. Before transitioning to UpGuard, Chapters Health used two different services to manage its cybersecurity risk, as well as monitor the security capabilities of its affiliates and vendors.
However, one issue the organization ran into was the cost of the services and a limited-licensing model that restricted how many vendors they could monitor. And although the previous services were able to provide a questionnaire to assess security postures, Chapters Health lacked a service to monitor networks.
“Before UpGuard, we had to juggle the vendors we could monitor due to our limited-licensing structure. If we partnered with a new vendor, we had to evaluate which vendors to remove to make room.”
At the same time, the organization also needed a solution to gain insight into its own security posture in order to make the necessary remediations as soon as possible.
The Solution
Parkin and his team were also able to monitor more vendors with UpGuard making it easier to be proactive with their entire portfolio. Instead of manually tracking each vendor, the software automation process helped save time and effort across the board instead of just a single assessment during the onboarding process.
“I’ve leveraged the dashboard information and reports in the UpGuard platform to develop KPIs to present in front of senior leadership. I’ve also been able to compare UpGuard to previous manual processes to show how much time we’ve been able to save overall.”
Parkin noted that UpGuard provides immediate insight to third parties during any mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions to view their security scores. By performing a risk assessment based on scoring, Chapters Health was able to quickly make informed decisions based on the vendor’s security controls.
More importantly, Chapters Health could now gain valuable insight into its own security environment. Parkin checks back into the UpGuard platform on a weekly basis to identify any dips in the score. He can now take the high-level scoring and reporting functions in the dashboard to his team to quickly remediate any issues that were identified to improve their security score.
The Result
Parkin noted the immediate benefits after switching over to UpGuard, particularly for the easy implementation and integration into their own systems. UpGuard eliminated the need for multiple solutions and filled any functionality gaps that they were experiencing before. When comparing with other options, Mike found UpGuard to be at the best price point, the ease of use and great customer service.
Through UpGuard, Chapters Health plans to implement active vendor management to ensure that each vendor continues to maintain its security posture. With the additional time saved and the ability to manage as many vendors as they need, Chapters Health can now safely and securely scale its operations and onboarding processes.
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Director of IT Security/CISO, Chapters Health System
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