Morphisec-A Proactive Defense in Healthcare Cybersecurity

‘Proactive breach prevention made easy’ is perhaps the best way to describe Morphisec, a world-renowned provider of advanced security solutions from endpoint to the cloud. For years Morphisec has offered the best protection for all sizes of businesses with any level of resources. The company uses defense to disrupt the status quo of healthcare cybersecurity, stopping the most advanced threats that bypass next generation antivirus (NGAV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions.

With an exclusive focus on breach prevention as ‘a layer in defense in-depth’, the firm advocates proactive practices to avert attacks that happen on the go. Morphisec’s CTO and Head of Threat Intelligence, Michael Gorelik, shares his insights on the security domain and ever-evolving threat landscape. Along with Morphisec’s research team, Gorelik believes in pushing the envelope to understand and navigate complex cybersecurity challenges.

“We’ve been swamped in the last few years as the pandemic and remote work have dramatically increased the risk of damaging attacks. Morphisec was the first to report the CCleaner supply chain attack, the first to discover the Jupyter infostealer as well as several rare fileless and evasive techniques used by the developers of Phobos ransomware,” he says. “We’ve kept our ears close to the ground when it comes to the evolution of ransomware.”

Morphisec’s suite of cloud-based endpoint and server security solutions leverage zero trust at runtime to automatically pinpoint and block modern attacks. Unlike traditional security solutions based on human intervention or behavioral technologies, Morphisec delivers operationally simple, proactive prevention to protect businesses worldwide from the most dangerous and sophisticated cyberattacks.

The company’s most notable customer success stories include Freeman Health System, a three-hospital network in Newton County, Missouri that struggled with endpoint security and wanted to fortify its security stack. Morphisec’s endpoint security solution met their needs by working in the backend and enabling their staff to focus on patient care without sweating about ransomware.

Citizens Medical Center offers another example. A 238-bed hospital in Victoria, Texas with over a thousand employees, it offers critical care to the city and seven surrounding counties. Citizens Medical Center was unable to secure their environment with operational resources using traditional endpoint security solutions. Their IT infrastructure was a legacy combo of Windows 10 with a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) from VMware Horizon. Accessing patient data via VDI was critical to the medical staff.

After a year’s research, their IT Director chose Morphisec and Microsoft Defender AV to secure their VDI and physical endpoints. He replaced their legacy antivirus with Microsoft Defender AV and applied the savings to Morphisec’s breach prevention solution to create a layer of protection against unknown memory attacks.

This IT Director realized Morphisec instantly neutralized a live attack and addressed it without requiring staff to respond to alerts. It was a Trickbot attack trying to deliver Ryuk ransomware. In fact, Morphisec not only blocked the attack, it gave Citizens Medical Center deep visibility into the attack chain. They could identify the attack and its origin, and received specific remediation advice that would be impossible for the client to do alone. This saved the hospital time and money, and ensured patients continued to receive the life-saving care they needed.

“We’re privy to the newest developments in the cybersecurity industry, including the newest techniques and tactics that cybercriminals are deploying in the field. When cybercriminals adapt, we adapt as well,” says Gorelik. 

Morphisec’s leadership and team are well-versed in the diverse aspects of the cybersecurity industry. They have fought and successfully prevented bad actors around the globe so that CIOs, CISOs and those in charge of security enjoy peaceful sleep.

Morphisec’s solution guards critical systems with a lightweight, easy-to-install agent that doesn’t require updates to keep infrastructure secure. Their solution is deployed across more than 8.5 million endpoints and averts up to 30,000 advanced attacks per day. This solution seamlessly fits and elevates the native security features of Windows and other antivirus and endpoint solutions to proactively prevent breaches and reduce management burden. 

The product protects your organization’s servers and workloads from all exploit-based, memory injection attacks in your applications such as browsers and productivity tools,” says Gorelik.

Morphisec Guard, the flagship offering, uses Morphisec’s patented moving target defense technology (MTD) to protect against in-memory, zero-day, and other advanced persistent threats (APTs) that target static defenses. It augments legacy next-generation antivirus (NGAV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions to counter these threats.

Guard is compatible with virtually any endpoint security product, and integrates with Microsoft Defender to enhance native security controls for Windows. This means businesses don’t have to pay extra for security that comes in the package.

“When we set out to develop Morphisec Guard,” explains Gorelik, “We had two important goals in mind. The first was to prevent the breaches that bypass businesses’ NGAV and EDR tools, and the second was to make sure no one has to pay for security features that the operating system already provides.” This full-stack endpoint solution offers scope beyond antivirus or EDR to bring transparency, control, and anti-tampering to Windows native security. Morphisec also offers a free, Lite version of Guard that brings enterprise-wide security control and visibility to Microsoft Defender Antivirus to help organizations bolster their endpoint defense strategies and lower costs.

Morphisec Keep, a server protection solution, secures your most critical server assets, whether they run on Windows, Linux, on-premises, cloud, or hybrid. It’s the only proactive, prevention-first zero trust security protection solution for servers and cloud workloads which prevents the execution of evasive advanced persistent threats that other technologies miss. “The product protects your organization’s servers and workloads from all exploit-based, memory injection attacks in your applications such as browsers and productivity tools,” says Gorelik. “What’s really important for healthcare organizations is that it does all this in a deterministic manner, without generating alerts to be analyzed, via a lightweight, easy to install 3MB agent that requires no administration.”

Additionally, Morphisec offers a vulnerability prioritization and visibility product called Morphisec Scout. It identifies application, operating system, and other vulnerabilities that can lead to security breaches. Morphisec’s incident response services help resource-constrained teams assess their overall security posture and identify, contain, and report on security incidents in progress while also verifying the presence of a breach. If ransomware attacks a server, it can feasibly cost a company thousands or even millions of dollars by locking up or exposing critical data. It can also put patient lives in danger, which we know is a real threat based upon the past few years. Morphisec’s engineered zero-trust, proactive cloud workload protection solution effectively protects Linux and Windows servers. These are usually the servers that hold the most critical assets and are susceptible to the most evasive and advanced attacks. Morphisec does this with zero performance impact and no false positive alerts.

Most importantly, these solutions ensure a better patient experience, and give healthcare professionals peace of mind that their patient and HIPAA regulated information is safe. “We give them that vital, dedicated memory defense layer that prevents attacks from gaining a foothold without slowing down operations,” concludes Gorelik. In addition, Morphisec is advancing anti-ransomware, mitigation, and deception capabilities in the coming months, so businesses of all sizes can stay protected against these advanced persistent threats.