When it comes to healthcare security solutions – is more actually better than less? (Hint: no, it’s not.)

You’ve been thorough and ticked every box. You’ve invested in identity management. Rolled out endpoint controls. Added access management platforms, patching tools, browser security, and a compliance layer on top.

Well done – your security stack is impressive and substantial. Or is it?

Because despite everything you’ve done, your clinicians are frustrated with the everyday friction of using your technology solutions – it’s just harder than it should be. Your IT team is stretched – and (depressingly, despite your level of care and investment) there are still gaps in your security.

And somewhere in the back of your mind, you know that if something goes wrong, the first question the board will ask is: “How did this happen with everything we had in place?”

Ring any bells? You’re not the only one. So – some home truths.

What most security vendors won’t tell you is that adding another tool to your stack can actually make you less secure. (Yes, you read that right – less.)

Not because their tools are bad, but because tools don’t integrate themselves. They don’t talk to each other by default. And every gap between them is an open door an attacker can walk through.

In healthcare, it plays out differently. Your sector has historically tackled security challenges in isolation, layering identity tools, endpoint controls, and access management solutions on top of one another. The result? You often end up with disjointed systems and duplicated effort, increased administrative overhead for IT teams, friction and frustration for your clinicians as they navigate multiple authentication steps, and gaps in visibility and control across the environment.

None of those outcomes makes your organisation more secure. In fact, they often make it worse – because when security gets in the way of care, people find workarounds. And workarounds are where breaches happen.

The cost of tool sprawl rarely shows up on a single line item. It’s easy to overlook – until something breaks. Like what?

The security cost. When siloed tools don’t share data or context, your visibility is fragmented. Threats that cross domains – say, a credential compromise that leads to browser-based data exfiltration – may be invisible to any individual tool, even if each tool is working exactly as designed.

The clinical cost. For clinicians, the consequence is friction. Yet another login screen or authentication prompt. Another timeout that means starting over. In healthcare, downtime isn’t just an inconvenience – it affects patient care. When a nurse at a shared workstation has to jump through three authentication steps to pull up a patient record during a shift handover? That’s not a minor inconvenience – but time taken away from the patient and their care.

The cost of risk: BYOD devices (like MacBooks) that doctors purchase and use for work pose their own challenges. Although not owned by the hospital, they are used to access internal apps and can present a risk if not secured.

The IT team cost. Every new tool means another dashboard for your IT team to monitor, another vendor relationship to manage, and another set of alerts to triage. Simply layering on security tool after tool isn’t a sustainable solution – it just adds complexity, increases your costs, and actively gets in the way of the people using it. At some point, the stack becomes the problem – and your best people are spending their time managing tools instead of managing risk.

Yes, every industry deals with tool sprawl. It’s nothing new.

But healthcare is a different story. The environment itself makes it harder than most. Shared clinical workstations and roaming clinicians. Legacy systems sitting alongside modern SaaS apps. Rising cyber risk across identity, credentials, and endpoints. And all the while, the constant pressure to keep clinicians moving and patients safe. It’s a lot to manage – and a lot to keep safe.

And the threat environment reflects this. Health service providers topped the list for data breaches in Australia – accounting for 19% of all notifications in 2025 – making you the most targeted sector by a clear margin. As a health organisation, you hold some of the most sensitive personal data imaginable, often across large, sprawling device environments. This makes you a desirable target – and a challenging one to defend.

In other industries, a security incident means business disruption. But in healthcare, it can mean something far worse. The pressure to keep systems running without interruption isn’t just a preference – it’s a patient safety requirement. That’s a very different environment to design security for.

So what’s the alternative? It’s not fewer security controls – but better-integrated ones.

In our experience, the organisations getting this right aren’t the ones with the longest list of security vendors. They’ve stopped thinking about security as something layered on top of work – and started treating it as something woven into how their people actually get things done.

Buying more tools won’t fix this. Integrating the ones you have – properly, into the way your clinicians actually work – will.

When security is designed around the way your clinicians access systems – rather than bolted on top of existing workflows – something changes. It becomes invisible. It stops being the thing that slows people down and costs them time. Your clinicians stop looking for workarounds, and your IT teams stop firefighting.

And your security posture actually improves, because the controls are being used the way they should be – quietly, in the background, without anyone noticing.

This isn’t just theory. It’s something we’ve been building with our partners at Island, Imprivata, and IGEL – and we’re already delivering it in real healthcare environments across Australia.

This unified approach brings together four components:

• Island’s Enterprise Browser – securing access to web-based and SaaS clinical systems.
• Imprivata’s identity and access management – fast, trusted authentication workflows.
• IGEL’s secure endpoint OS – built specifically for shared clinical environments.
• Endpoint Focus’ implementation expertise – pulling it all together and making it work in the real world.

Rather than adding more layers, what we’ve built together embeds security controls into how your clinicians access systems – particularly in the browser, where much of today’s clinical work takes place.

Here’s what it means for you, wherever you sit:

If you’re a clinician, it means fast, friction-free access to systems – with fewer logins and interruptions. The experience is the same whether you’re at a shared workstation in the ED or logging in remotely. Technology stays out of the way, so you can focus on patients.

If you’re an IT or security leader, it means simplified endpoint and access management, reduced reliance on legacy infrastructure controls, and – the big one – less tool sprawl, fewer exceptions, and stronger control.

If you’re an executive, it means reduced cyber and operational risk, stronger protection of patient data, and better return on security investment through consolidation. Security becomes an enabler of care delivery – not a blocker.

In healthcare, there’s no room for a trial-and-error approach to security. So it matters that we’ve done this in Australian healthcare – not as a pilot, but properly, at scale.

At Western Health, one of Victoria’s largest public health networks, we led the first Island Enterprise Browser implementation in Australia – eliminating a critical dependency on legacy browser technology across thousands of endpoints across multiple hospital sites. Technical issues dropped significantly, clinicians gained faster access to systems, and Western Health came away with a security architecture built to scale – and the confidence to match.

At Mercy Health, we tackled a significant vulnerability backlog and upgraded thousands of devices – including mobile Workstation on Wheels units used at bedsides – without disrupting 24/7 hospital operations.

And for one of our Hospital in the Home customers, the impact was summed up simply: “This rollout has been life-changing for our service… you and your team have honestly made this a reality, not a dream.”

That’s what good healthcare security looks like. Less complexity, more clarity.

If you’re not sure, that’s a good place to start. We’re happy to have an honest conversation about where your gaps are – no hard sell, just a practical chat about what might work better for your environment.

Let’s talk.