F5 helps Cegedim accelerate the digitalization of healthcare by ensuring data security and promoting DevOps applications

Today, digital transformation has become a global trend, and the medical industry is also undergoing a digital transformation. However, with the popularization of digital medical methods such as online registration, online consultation, and electronic medical records, while helping to improve efficient medical care, it also exposes medical data to unprecedented risks. For medical institutions, facing more and more cyber attacks, information security and privacy protection are crucial.

As a leader in multi-cloud application security and application delivery service technology, F5 is committed to providing customers with differentiated, high-performance, and secure digital experiences, and protecting the information security of medical institutions through leading technologies.

Cegedim is a French company specializing in medical technology and services. Founded in 1969, the company has more than 4,500 employees in more than 10 countries around the world. As a giant in the industry, the company has business in Europe and the United States, and plans to continue to expand in the future. Cegedim has always been at the forefront of technology because the data it is responsible for is vital to patient health and has great value to increasingly savvy cybercriminals.

As more healthcare information moves online, patients and healthcare professionals expect to access information, including medical records, from any device and anywhere. As a result, protecting patient data becomes a significant and ongoing challenge when developing, deploying, and managing reliable and secure applications. For healthcare organizations, there is no room for error or delay when it comes to highly sensitive information such as medical records, hospital management systems, and personal medical applications. To stay ahead, Cegedim needed a platform that could provide end-to-end application security—whether on-premises or in the cloud—while giving its developers the freedom to innovate, upgrade applications, and act quickly.

Introducing F5 technology

After considering several vendors, Cegedim selected F5 because of its reputation and proven track record of delivering end-to-end application security for multiple platforms and cloud environments.

Cegedim introduced F5® BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM) to transform its system, enhancing security while optimizing the process of delivering applications to customers. BIG-IP LTM not only improves Cegedim's ability to develop customized applications for different healthcare service providers, but also provides greater application service flexibility, allowing customers to choose the cloud configuration and deployment options that best match their changing business needs.

At the same time, Cegedim also deployed F5® BIG-IP® Application Security Manager™ (ASM) to provide a flexible Web application firewall to protect application security in traditional, virtual, and private cloud environments. This product helps Cegedim protect applications from advanced threats while complying with relevant laws and regulations.

“Developing applications for the healthcare industry is mission critical, and with F5’s help, we can significantly accelerate the speed with which we deploy applications for our customers, while also improving security and reliability,” said Jérôme Dury, CTO of Cegedim.

Managed security services provide reliable protection

In addition, Cegedim has adopted F5 Silverline managed services to enhance its defense capabilities. F5® Silverline® DDoS Protection is a managed cloud scrubbing service provided through the F5 Silverline cloud platform. The solution can control large-scale, SSL and application-targeted attacks in real time, which enables Cegedim to protect its customers from attacks exceeding hundreds of GB of data per second. At the same time, Cegedim can also defend against denial of service attacks at OSI layers 3 to 7, as well as attacks specifically targeting DNS infrastructure or SSL negotiations, providing customers with a high level of DoS attack protection.

With the F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall (WAF), Cegedim has enhanced its capabilities and reduced operating expenses through services that are set up, deployed, and maintained by certified experts in the F5 Security Operations Center (SOC).

On the operational side, another outstanding advantage of the F5 solution is that it can dynamically interact with the security information and event management (SIEM) capabilities in Cegedim's own SOC. This process ensures that Cegedim can significantly reduce the transactional web application risks of its customers.

Improve teamwork and promote DevOps application

For Cegedim, the cooperation with F5 not only protects data security and reduces network risks, but also promotes DevOps applications with simple and easy-to-use operations, thereby enhancing team collaboration and bringing a more efficient way of working.

F5 provides Cegedim's IT team with a simplified web interface so that both the development team and the operations team can benefit from integrated security and testing services. Employees can log in through a secure management platform and start collaborative projects with just a few clicks of the mouse without slowing down development or extending the implementation cycle. Users do not have to fill in complex setting parameters, but can choose the most appropriate configuration based on their needs. There is no doubt that this approach has helped Cegedim further improve its corporate culture and enhance cooperation between teams.

“Sales teams are now more confident in meeting their clients’ audit needs, and development, operations, DevOps and security teams are more comfortable working together,” said Jérôme Dury, CTO of Cegedim.

Overall, through cooperation with F5, Cegedim has not only comprehensively improved its information security and data protection capabilities, but also improved its agility through DevOps applications, enabling it to connect with customers faster, increase productivity by 90%, and significantly speed up time to market, thereby driving the company's continued growth in market share.