How BioPlus Simplified Ransomware Protection

Several weeks back, Clumio Systems Engineer Jeff Lackey had a discussion with one of our awesome customers, Fred Gagle, about his company’s journey to the cloud. Fred is the VP of Technology at BioPlus Specialty Pharmacy, the nation’s largest non-payer specialty pharmacy.  They have physical locations in six states and are licensed to fill prescriptions in all 50, with over 500 employees. BioPlus innovated a 2 hour acceptance guarantee, 2 day ready to ship guarantee, and 2 click online refills.

 

 

The Pain Before the Cloud

Computing in an on-premises environment, BioPlus’s IT team was always playing catchup.  They felt they were chronically behind, as the company was growing faster than the team could add servers, technologies and solutions. They knew they needed to move to the cloud to better enable their growth. BioPlus operates in a highly regulated space, subject to HIPAA, Medicare and PCI compliance standards, and of course the medical field is known to be a prime target of ransomware attacks. Given those realities, they knew data protection was of the utmost importance, and selected Clumio to fulfill that need.

Unlimited Scalability for Unlimited Business Growth

Once BioPlus decided to move their environment from on premises to the cloud, their journey took about 11 months.  After considering all the options, they selected AWS because they felt those services would best support BioPlus’s brand promise and speed to service.  They needed virtually unlimited resources to enable growth and scale as they expanded into new markets. The other very important factor was AWS’s security and compliance.
Given BioPlus’s decision criteria for their cloud environment, it’s no surprise that they selected Clumio as their data protection provider. Fred loved that Clumio’s infinite scalability meant he wouldn’t have to worry about backup keeping up with growth. Especially considering that patient data like records and lab work tend to expand exponentially. Clumio’s elasticity was and is key to enabling BioPlus’s growth and success.

Data Protection Challenges

If one thing is a given, Fred knew their data had to be secure, and liked that Clumio is built with security at the forefront of thought, from front to back. Additionally, he had to consider the long-term retention requirements for patient records. HIPAA requires 6 years, and CMS requires 10 years for medicare providers.  HIPAA also requires backed up data to be air-gapped.  Because BioPlus processes payments, they are also subject to PCI, which requires end-to-end encryption.  Clumio delivers on all of these needs.

Finding Even More Benefits in Clumio

Fred and his colleagues at BioPlus were already thrilled with everything Clumio delivered, but there were a few additional wow factors that really sealed the deal. First was the speed to implementation.  BioPlus was able to have their Clumio backups fully up and running in less than a week from signing up. They also needed fast recovery times, and the ability to restore individual files. Finally, the fact that Clumio did all of this with SaaS simplicity meant Fred’s team could focus on their many other tasks. Then there’s the fact that Clumio saved Fred about 20% vs the other solutions he considered. This was naturally a welcome benefit.

More Details in the On-Demand Webinar

In the recording, Fred and Jeff go into much more detail on all of the points above, and they answer the audience’s questions about encryption key rotation, the future of healthcare and pharmacy technology, moving core legacy applications to the cloud, and more. If all this sounds interesting, I encourage you to watch the video.