A connected, interoperable world with smart devices delivering data to clinicians and caregivers, giving them important insights about the people they care for, is something the entire healthcare industry is working towards.
But with every connected device in a hospital or other facility plugged into the network, security officials tasked with protecting patient records from bad actors are more concerned. This concern is not wrong, because in many cases, the IT departments of these organizations do not fully grasp every device connected to the network, Greg Murphy said, Order. The Santa Clara, California-based company secures connected devices using machine learning and advanced methods of inspecting and managing network traffic.
“When we look at the status of connected devices in the enterprise, it’s a real mess. IT organizations can’t determine which devices are connected to their network, where they are, or what they’re doing,” Murphy said in an email in response to questions. “Our goal is to bring order to this chaotic environment, and by doing so, provide organizations with the means to protect these devices.”
With Ordr announcing a $40 million funding round from investors Wednesday, Murphy moved one step closer to his company’s goal of bringing order to a chaotic world. The Series C round was led by Battery Ventures and eleven eleven Ventures, with participation from new investor Northgate Capital. Existing investors Wing Venture Capital, Unusual Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures and Mayo Clinic also contributed. In addition to institutional investors, some Silicon Valley entrepreneurs also participated in this round of financing.
Including this round, Ordr has raised more than $90 million. The Series C funding will be used to strengthen Ordr’s marketing and partner organizations; support existing customers so they can fully optimize the value of Ordr’s technology; and invest in innovation and research and development, Murphy explained.
The startup’s technology helps address three major challenges facing health organizations: what devices are on the network (whether connected medical devices or other IoT devices), what those devices are doing, and how to secure them.
“Within hours of deployment – via a network tap or SPAN or cloud-to-cloud integration – Ordr automatically discovers high-fidelity information on every connected device, including make, classification, location and application/port usage,” Murphy explained.
Next, the company scores a risk level for each device on the network. Murphy said this was insight gained by searching “vulnerability and manufacturing databases and threat intelligence feeds, as well as integrating IDS to identify devices with active threats, exploits, vulnerabilities, FDA recalls, manufacturing recalls, weak passwords and certificates.” Ordr’s technology also has the ability to identify unknown threats by using machine learning to understand regular device behavior. So now Ordr’s platform will be able to flag a device if it’s communicating with malicious domains it wouldn’t normally enter.
Finally, the technology attempts to automate certain active and passive operations to allow good communications to continue and prevent attacks from getting worse after they occur.
“Ordr also supports reactive tactics to disrupt the entire kill chain of attacks — including blocking traffic, terminating sessions, or quarantining infected devices,” Murphy said.
The cost of deploying Ordr technology can range from $50,000 for small organizations with fewer devices to monitor and protect to hundreds of thousands of dollars for large hospitals and health systems that need to manage extensive IT environments.
Needless to say, health systems and hospitals with heavy use of legacy and connected devices need some help to protect them. Connected devices make up about 45 percent of today’s networked devices, and that number is growing, Murphy said.Consider the growth in the larger context of how the healthcare industry has fallen victim to ransomware attacks during the pandemic even led to a warning from the FBI.
Not surprisingly, the healthcare industry remains Ordr’s largest user base, with clients including the Cleveland Clinic, Fairview Health System and Dayton Children’s Hospital. Murphy touts the company has been named a market leader in IoT security by KLAS Research three consecutive years. But make no mistake, the startup has competitors.They include Palo Alto Networks (following Acquired Zingbox), unarmedand Claroty (because it purchased Medigate).
Murphy — unsurprisingly — believes Ordr is better than its competitors.
“Ordr’s key differentiators are our highly accurate visibility into devices (IT, IoT, IoMT, and OT) and risks, a baseline of device behavior, and the automated creation of enforcement policies across a broad ecosystem of networking and security products,” he declared . [IoMT stands for Internet of Medical Things and OT expands to Operational Technology.]
Photo: MF3d, Getty Images
