Tausight recently announced that it raised $20 million in Series A funding to help solve one of the most challenging responsibilities of healthcare CIOs and CISOs: ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of patients’ protected health information (PHI).
We sat down with David Ting, founder and CTO of Tausight, to discuss the company's mission, what key security challenges the company aims to solve, aspirations for the company in 2021 and more in this Q&A:
What is the company's mission?
Tausight’s mission is to protect all the people of healthcare – patients, providers, administrators, IT personnel – by helping to solve one of the most challenging responsibilities of healthcare CIOs and CISOs: ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of patients’ protected health information (PHI).
What problems do you aim to solve and how?
The healthcare industry is uniquely susceptible to vulnerabilities due to the enormous amount of sensitive data stored in the clinical workflow and PHI’s high market value to cybercriminals and lately, nation-state actors. Threat actors know this, which is why the threat level has worsened over the course of the pandemic. As healthcare providers embrace digital transformation, virtual care, and cloud-first strategies, the underlying IT infrastructure has increasingly become decentralized, creating many more gaps that can result in PHI being put at greater risk. Tausight aims to help healthcare CIOs and CISOs understand in real-time the risks that are inherent in how PHI is used so the threats can be eliminated. By analyzing in real time how patient data is stored, used, and transmitted in clinical environments, Tausight helps healthcare proactively address vulnerabilities that could lead to an eventual costly cyber incident.
How does your background as the co-founder and former CTO of Imprivata and a former appointee to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Health Care Industry Cybersecurity Task Force help you succeed in your mission?
One of the benefits of having worked with healthcare leaders in the private sector and in the government is that it’s given me the opportunity to gain perspective on the challenges facing healthcare CIOs and CISOs. I’ve worked with hundreds of CIOs, CISOs and hospitals and have witnessed first hand the complexity of healthcare IT systems and challenges around healthcare IT resilience. The reality is that current cybersecurity solutions can address some aspects of securing the healthcare IT system, but do not adequately address hidden vulnerabilities found in clinical workflows. We are drawing on decades of industry experience to build something specifically designed for the "people of healthcare" to solve the unique challenges that healthcare organizations face.
What are your aspirations for the company in 2021?
This announcement marks a big milestone in Tausight’s company history as it brings us one step closer to achieving our overall goal to help healthcare CIOs and CISOs address in real-time threats that put PHI, and ultimately clinical workflows, at risk. Our goal is to expand our
go-to-market team and further build out our healthcare-specific platform for securing and de-risking PHI usage - and dealing with those vulnerabilities in clinical workflow that put patient data at risk.
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