Securing the Perimeter to Avoid Cyberattack

I'm Cristiano Silveira, the Superintendent of Technology and Digital Solutions at Unimed Porto Alegre.

Today, our Unimed Porto Alegre medical work cooperative includes 690,000 patients and 6,900 doctors who care for them. That’s why technology is fundamental and essential — and, I would go so far as to say, indispensable — for us.

I would say our main challenge is data security. As a medical cooperative, we deal with extremely sensitive data.

Working remotely made us think about other forms of protection with regard to our data perimeter. So, we went to the market to find technology that would allow us to have greater control over what was coming into our environment. In this way, microsegmentation made perfect sense because we could shield environments that we only wanted accessed in the way we’d intended.

However, what led us specifically to the Akamai Guardicore Segmentation solution was our cloud migration project because we needed to complete it very quickly. We had to map out all the integrations and interrelations of the environments we had in the physical data centers and take them to the cloud.

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is an extremely powerful tool. It’s a robust solution with plenty of grip and even a few features that ease implementation. It made our team take a different view, so we dove into getting a better understanding of how environments relate to one another.

I often say that although we chose Akamai Guardicore Segmentation for its intended purpose, it also took care of our cloud migration process. Without that solution, we would have had to handle it all ourselves.

What I would say is most remarkable is the visibility we get into the entire connectivity structure of our environment despite its complexity. We have a hybrid environment today, which means that we have to have a very broad and very complex view of that environment.

Today, we make corrections and improvements (and even make new investments) based on the information provided by the Akamai Guardicore Segmentation solution. It gives us a sense of security, and allows our technical analysts to act on objective information. I don’t want to have access control equipment any more; I want to have access control in the cloud. 

Since we have no way of accurately quantifying all the damage caused by a cyberattack, my advice to CIOs is to change the way you look at solutions. Study them; create arguments for and against them; and reinforce them with figures, data, and facts, including from the market itself. It’s an important investment for your company and can certainly help avoid incurring double, maybe even even triple, the costs of having a cybersecurity incident.

Unimed is a Brazilian medical work cooperative and health insurance operator founded in 1967 that was created as an alternative against capital-based health plans. It is considered the largest of its kind in the world, with more than 105,000 affiliated physicians, 386 branches, and more than 15 million beneficiaries.

Akamai powers and protects life online. Leading companies worldwide choose Akamai to build, deliver, and secure their digital experiences — helping billions of people live, work, and play every day. Akamai Connected Cloud, a massively distributed edge and cloud platform, puts apps and experiences closer to users and keeps threats farther away. Learn more about Akamai’s cloud computing, security, and content delivery solutions at akamai.com and akamai.com/blog, or follow Akamai Technologies on X, formerly known as Twitter, and LinkedIn.