How Lantum, a Workforce Platform for Healthcare Organisations, Secures Sensitive Data with Lookout SSE Technology

Headquartered in London, Lantum is on a mission to radically improve how the healthcare industry connects with the workforce so that they can provide better patient care. The Lantum platform uses advanced technology to help healthcare organisations manage their workforce and connect with a large network of healthcare professionals to fill shift gaps.

The Challenge — Protect Sensitive Data and Ensure Compliance

UK-based Lantum, the pioneer of Connected Scheduling™, unites healthcare providers and their workforces so that they can deliver the best care together. With more than 37,000 clinicians onboarded to its platform, in 2021 Lantum supported over 3,000 healthcare organizations, including almost 150 COVID-19 vaccination centers, with their staffing needs. This saved the NHS over £30 million.

Lantum works with sensitive data. The company required a solution that ensured all this sensitive data, including employee and clinician records, is protected. The solution must minimize risk of exposure and ensure compliance with several cybersecurity and data standards such as the International Organization for Standardization’s ISO 27001^[1] and the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre’s Cyber Essentials^[2]. Ensuring successful compliance with these regulations is essential to Lantum’s business. Without it, Lantum can’t continue as a supplier to the NHS – a core customer.

Lantum utilises Google Workspace and enjoys its flexibility. However, there were security concerns about the sensitive data that could be aggregated within Google Drive. It is imperative to minimize the risk of an employee without the right access controls viewing or storing data on Google Drive and sharing that data outside of an approved group. Lantum wanted visibility over downloads of sensitive data when, for example, an employee has resigned. According to Gary O’Connor, CTO, Lantum: “It’s the things that you don’t know about that you worry about the most.”

Insider threats could cause serious problems down the line and without the right controls in place, the IT team could potentially struggle to work out who was responsible. Being proactive is key.

^[1] ISO/IEC 27001 is the world’s best-known standard for information security management systems (ISMS) and their requirements.

^[2] The U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre’s Cyber Essentials regulation helps organizations guard against the most common cyber threats and demonstrate their commitment to cyber security.

Solution

O’Connor and Lantum’s compliance officer were planning to recertify Lantum for ISO 27001 and refresh their adherence to Cyber Essentials. During this process, they decided to implement Lookout Secure Cloud Access, an award-winning cloud access security broker (CASB) solution.

According to O’Connor, “When you go through a process like ISO 27001, you must be able to prove that you have strong data protection controls in place. As Lantum’s business scaled, we needed to automate certain things that previously were acceptable as a smaller business to do manually. If we can’t do what we need to do to maintain ISO 27001 accreditation, we’re not going to get into the conversations we need in order to grow revenue.” 

Lookout Secure Cloud Access provides seamless security across all cloud and SaaS apps with unified policies, trusted data security, and validated standards compliance offering complete visibility and control. The company’s CASB solution sets itself apart with a data-centric approach that empowers productivity. With advanced data protection and user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) capabilities built in, it enables organizations to safeguard data against intentional insider threats, accidental data leakage, compromised accounts, and other advanced attacks without minimising productivity.

Working directly with Appurity’s team of mobile security consultants and Lookout sales engineers, Lantum experienced a seamless and fast deployment of Lookout Secure Cloud Access — and saw immediate results. The customer quickly implemented a dozen data protection policies, adding more as business requirements scale.

According to O’Connor, “One of the things that really helped us was the fact that you could quickly set up the Lookout tenant and easily configure it with Google Workspace – within under an hour. We achieved value really, really quickly, and we’ve been able to build on top of that value over time.”

Lantum has a hybrid work model with most employees spread across the U.K., along with several throughout the U.S. and Eastern Europe. With Lookout, Lantum can see which people are accessing its data and from where. Having visibility into the type of data, where the data is located, and the level of sensitivity gives Lantum a better picture of expected or unexpected behavior patterns and markers.

The start of the war in Ukraine was another driving factor to scale Lantum’s cybersecurity program. Several organizations were identified as critical infrastructure by U.K. government bodies, including the NHS. These identified organizations were required to review their cybersecurity policies due to concerns about external threats. These time-sensitive requirements cascaded down to all of NHS’ suppliers, including Lantum. O’Connor and the compliance team needed to quickly demonstrate how they were dealing with various security scenarios. O’Connor said, “We quickly saw that screw tighten everywhere because of that event. Lookout has helped us deal with more of our cybersecurity matters in a systematic way.”

Lookout Secure Cloud Access is one element of the Lookout Cloud Security Platform, which converges security service edge (SSE) and endpoint security to protect users and data wherever they reside. It continuously monitors the risk posture of users and devices to provide dynamic and granular zero trust access based on the sensitivity level of apps and data, enabling organisations to protect its workers, their devices, applications and data from unauthorised access as well as from modern day internet based threats. The expanded platform provides customers the ability to leverage the threat intelligence from mobile endpoints to make more informed decisions for cloud security services.

Built on the Company’s patented technologies, the Lookout Cloud Security Platform combines the following security services:

• Lookout Secure Cloud Access, the Company’s cloud access security broker (CASB) solution, provides seamless security across all cloud and SaaS apps with unified policies, trusted data security and validated standards compliance, offering complete visibility and control.
• Lookout Mobile Endpoint Security enables secure productivity from mobile devices – personal, managed, and unmanaged iOS, Android and Chromebook devices – by protecting against socially engineered phishing campaigns, malicious apps, risky network connections and full device compromise.
• Lookout Secure Private Access is a cloud-delivered zero trust network access (ZTNA) solution built on the principle of zero trust that provides seamless access to private enterprise applications no matter where the user or the application may be located. Unlike a VPN, Lookout Secure Private Access connects users to applications and not the network, a core principle of a zero trust architecture.
• Lookout Secure Internet Access is a cloud delivered secure web gateway (SWG), which includes Firewall as a Service (FWaaS), built on the principles of zero trust to protect users, underlying networks and corporate data from internet-based threats and prevent data leakage.

O’Connor added, “Cloud tools like Google Workspace have blurred the boundaries of how we work – more and more business is being accomplished on our employee’s mobile devices, which increases the risk of inappropriate data usage. Lookout Secure Cloud Access has given us greater visibility and control over our corporate and partner data without disrupting our employees experiencing any disruption in productivity.”

Results

Lookout CASB has helped Lantum:

• gain visibility into data, devices, and users;
• ensure continuous monitoring of user and entity behavior analytics and implement advanced data protection controls to help ensure compliance with regulatory requirements;
• protect data stored in Google Workspace apps from misuse and Internet-based threats;
• and enable employees to securely collaborate in a hybrid work environment.

“Thanks to Lookout Secure Cloud Access, we can see a surge in downloads from a particular user or timeframe. It turns out none of them presented a threat, but having insight into this activity gave us peace of mind.” — Gary O’Connor, CTO, Lantum

About Appurity

Appurity is a team of consultants who assess environments and business requirements to deliver specialised, best-in-class security solutions – endpoint to cloud.

Built for the modern and dispersed workforce, Appurity’s solutions adhere to data protection and cybersecurity schemes and regulations such as Cyber Essentials and ISO. Appurity works with companies to develop and implement impenetrable security strategies that utilise the latest technologies and security frameworks including ZTNA, SSE, CASB, MTD, continuously validating security risks.

Working with technology partners that include Lookout, Appurity’s solutions are built to offer unparalleled protection, while improving productivity for users and IT professionals.

About Lookout

Lookout, Inc. is the endpoint to cloud security company purpose-built for the intersection of enterprise and personal data. We safeguard data across devices, apps, networks and clouds through our unified, cloud-native security platform — a solution that’s as fluid and flexible as the modern digital world. By giving organizations and individuals greater control over their data, we enable
them to unleash its value and thrive. Lookout is trusted by enterprises of all sizes, government agencies and millions of consumers to protect sensitive data, enabling them to live, work and connect — freely and safely.