Bhaktivedanta Hospital

Company Intro

Bhaktivedanta Hospital and Research Institute is one of the largest hospitals in India, located in the Mumbai region. Arvind Mafatlal Group is a 118-year-old Indian conglomerate that works within diverse fields including textiles, manufacturing, technology, education, and healthcare. Shibin Chulliparambil is the Group CIO and Senior Advisor at Arvind Mafatlal Group, in addition to being CEO of Arvind Mafatlal Group’s technology company, Vrata Tech Solutions. Vrata Tech Solutions provides global support for implementation, ERP solutions, infrastructure upgrades, solution architecture, and cybersecurity for organizations looking to digitally scale up. Currently, Arvind Mafatlal Group is growing at a rapid pace, expanding its horizons into the Middle East and looking to grow in the US, UK, and Australia in the future. As the Group CIO for the past six years and a respected industry figure, Shibin has been responsible for leading the digital side of operations, including providing continued technical guidance for Bhaktivedanta Hospital.

The Problem

Cybersecurity is a major concern for healthcare organizations around the world. Breaches targeting the sector hit an all-time high in 2021, affecting 45 million individuals in the US alone. The healthcare industry is a prime target for hackers given its wealth of personally identifiable information (PII) and its busy employees, with a phishing email being the first step in over 90% of attacks.

Email is used daily by the majority of employees at Bhaktivedanta Hospital, and with staff often busy attending to patient emergencies, many users were not paying enough attention to their inboxes to spot the signs of complex phishing attempts. Additionally, the hospital was using outdated IT technologies with unpatched vulnerabilities, increasing the risk of being hit by new and emerging cyberattacks, slowing down response times, and hampering productivity.

Solution

Shibin went about evaluating several different email security solutions individually, testing solutions he’d either previously used or had heard of through his network, such as IRONSCALES. Shibin was looking for a solution that was powerful, easy to scale up and migrate, and quick to implement.

“I reached out to my peers in the industry who were using IRONSCALES, and they gave me very good feedback. I liked that, with IRONSCALES, maintenance is easy, and the end-user experience is a positive one.” said Shibin Chulliparambil, CIO at Arvind Mafatal Group

Shibin discovered IRONSCALES through Arvind Mafatlal Group’s partner, SRC Cyber Solutions LLP India, which provided excellent service and support throughout installation and management. Conducting a 25-day Proof of Concept (POC), the security team was impressed by the platform’s ease of use, simplified maintenance, and straightforward alerts, which are easy for new and non-technical end users to understand. Shibin was also interested in IRONSCALES’ additional phishing simulation and training capabilities, an element that was missing from other solutions. After the POC, Shibin decided to implement the full IRONSCALES solution, and within 15 days, Bhaktivedanta Hospital’s 600+ user inboxes were equipped with IRONSCALES’ AI-enabled, anti-phishing technology.

Outcomes

In the six months since implementation, IRONSCALES has inspected over 350,000 emails, remediating over 1,700 phishing attempts before they could develop into an incident, and resolving over 150 phishing incidents. IRONSCALES’ automated remediation now removes reported emails from user inboxes immediately and at scale, freeing up time for Shibin and his team. As well as lowering false positives, IRONSCALES uses AI to make further incident suggestions, supporting faster decision-making. Shibin is pleased to see that a significant number of blocked emails never even reached user inboxes; these numbers have allowed him to communicate the benefits of the company’s investment to the wider team.

Shibin is also satisfied that Bhaktivedanta Hospital and the wider Arvind Mafatlal Group are saving money by reducing the number of cyberattacks they’re exposed to, therefore reducing revenue spent on ransoms, getting systems back up and running, or paying non-compliance fines for regulations like HIPAA. While not every busy hospital employee is aware of cybersecurity terminology and the structure of a phishing attack, Shibin has seen a marked increase in general phishing awareness. More users are flagging emails in their inbox, enquiring about phishing, and generally showing more curiosity about email security.

Looking Ahead

Bhaktivedanta Hospital is happy with the results that IRONSCALES has generated, and Shibin is looking to switch other companies within the group to the IRONSCALES solution once existing products need to be renewed.

Shibin is also looking forward to leveraging the phishing simulation and training features of the IRONSCALES platform in the future. Over the next few months, his team is planning a course of action for employee training, including deciding on campaign frequency, targeting, and the structure of a wider training course. With regular phishing simulations, Bhaktivedanta Hospital employees will be able to test and continually improve their email security knowledge, preventing future attacks from risking the wider business and its patients.