SEA-US Cable System Secures FCC License Cable is Targeted for Completion in 2Q 2017

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The Southeast Asia – U S (SEA-US) Cable System publicly marked key milestones and closed in on others with the completion of the installation of its state-of-the-art undersea fiber optic cable network by the second quarter of 2017. Last week, the Hermosa Beach, California shore-end was successfully connected. On January 12, 2017, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted the SEA-US cable landing license. By the end of January 2017 the construction of California’s cable landing station will be completed. In February 2017 the installation vessel will arrive in Honolulu, Hawaii, after completing its main-lay construction between California and Hawaii.

Essential to the SEA-US Cable System’s reliability is the location and protection of mission-critical equipment on land. The SEA-US consortium members chose CoreSite (NYSE:COR), a premier provider of secure, reliable, high-performance data center and interconnection solutions across the United States, to house the SEA-US Cable System’s submarine line terminating equipment (SLTE) at CoreSite’s purpose built LA2 data center in downtown Los Angeles, California. The SEA-US Cable System’s unique design provides its users with additional protection between the Hermosa Beach, California landing and CoreSite’s LA2 data center over physically diverse dark fiber pairs.

The historic US $250 million SEA-US Cable System is being constructed by NEC Corporation. When completed, the system will deliver an initial design capacity of 20 Terabit per second (Tb/s) capacity, using NEC’s state-of-the-art 100 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) technology. This capacity will help to meet the exponentially growing demand for bandwidth between Asia and North America, while also enabling onward connectivity to existing and planned submarine cable systems.

The SEA-US Cable System investors consist of the following consortium members: Globe Telecom (Manila, Philippines), GTA (Tamuning, Guam), GTI (Los Angeles, California), Hawaiian Telcom (Honolulu, Hawaii), RTI (San Francisco, California), Telin (Jakarta, Indonesia) and Telkom USA (Los Angeles, California). More details can be found below.

The Role of Endpoint Security in Today’s Healthcare IT Environment

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This is the number of opportunities a cybercriminal needs to exploit healthcare network vulnerabilities, steal passwords, install malware, and ultimately work their way through the entire IT ecosystem. Once inside, they could hijack control of medical equipment, gain access to patient data, and much more, ultimately putting patient lives and organizational reputation on the line.

The shift towards deploying and managing a more patient-friendly healthcare environment that includes the myriad of devices being accessed by patients and employees can be very challenging, especially when it comes to endpoint security.

Let’s take a closer look at the role endpoint security plays in today’s healthcare environment, and why it needs to be part of the larger network security puzzle. 

Supporting the Patient-Centric Care Movement

Healthcare providers of all types are now being required to provide platforms that allow for seamless communication and collaboration between key stakeholders. As a result, information that needs to be securely shared and stored is now flowing at an increasingly rapid rate, and in many different directions, creating a need for security solutions that can support these exchanges.

This move towards patient-centric network services has decentralized the monitoring process and resulted in patients, providers, and other stakeholders accessing information that originates from outside the hospital’s physical walls.

The more information accessed and shared outside the hospital setting, the greater the risk of malicious content working its way inside. While some healthcare systems are adjusting to these changes by employing endpoint security and robust security solutions, there are still a number of organizations that have left the doors to their data wide open. Endpoint security is critical to keeping the patient and other stakeholders’ data secure.

Securing Endpoints Related to the Increased BYOD Interest

The growing number of connected devices used by employees in the healthcare sector is leading to more information sharing, but it’s also placing the endpoint at greater risk than ever before. It’s very common to see smartphones, tablets, and laptops being used inside today’s hospitals, and the data that’s being accessed needs to be secured, from the Internet to the endpoint. This data often contains sensitive medical information that’s being shared between healthcare professionals, including medical imaging data, transcriptions, prescriptions, and more, and typically needs to be vetted by a number of different individuals (physicians, employers, claims processors, etc.) to determine protocols and procedures.

This need for a collaborative digital workspace to enable internal and external collaboration makes it critical that endpoint security be taken seriously. Without appropriate endpoint security solutions in place, healthcare systems will not be able to enhance their existing systems and processes without an overabundance of risk.

An Endpoint Blueprint for Success

Solely deploying security end to end is simply not enough in today’s healthcare industry, as it lacks two key components – integration and automation. Endpoint security, today and in the future, needs to be part of a much larger security framework that can work together with other security elements, like threat intelligence.

From inside the network to the cloud, powerful and integrated end-to-end solutions need to protect the attack surface at all points along the kill chain. When different security sensors and tools are able to work together to collect, analyze, and coordinate a response to threats, the entire healthcare environment will be better protected. Security solutions must be ready and able to deal with the sophisticated threats of today in real time.

Let’s get a conversation going on Twitter! What role do you think endpoint security plays in today’s healthcare IT environment and where do you think we are headed in 2017 and beyond?

Written by Susan Biddle, Sr. Director of Healthcare at Fortinet

Hontiveros to Investigate Incident that Led to Woman Giving Birth in Cab

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The Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Health vowed on Monday to investigate possible violations to the Anti-Hospital Deposit Law after a woman reportedly gave birth last week inside a taxicab in Quezon City after being refused by two hospitals.

Akbayan Senator Risa Hontiveros said that the incident will be on the agenda at the second hearing of her bill that aims to strengthen Republic Act No. 8344, a law that prohibits hospitals from asking for deposits first before treating patients with emergency needs.

According to the initial field investigation conducted by Hontiveros' office, a certain Aira Arellano was turned away by a public hospital in Caloocan City last January 11 after its staff allegedly assessed that she went into labor prematurely. They said that they had no incubator for the baby.

Arellano proceeded to the next nearest hospital but eventually gave birth inside a taxicab. Rescuers and media on the scene then brought her to a private hospital in Fairview, Quezon City. However, the attending staff allegedly only cut the umbilical cord of the infant and said that Arellano could not afford their fees prompting them to transfer to the East Avenue Medical Center (EAMC). The EAMC staff that admitted Arellano and her infant, however, said that she had a regular childbirth.

Hontiveros said that based on these accounts, it is worth investigating if the hospital in Fairview, Quezon City, violated the Anti-Hospital Deposit Law. The Senator also said that Arellano and her child were twice victimized.

"She was a victim of a private hospital that refused to admit her because she couldn't afford the deposit demanded of her, and a public hospital that lacked facilities. We cannot tolerate hospitals denying mothers and their children health services in their time of urgent need. Where will our people go if they can't get medical help from either public and private hospitals?" Hontiveros said.

Hontiveros said that she will mobilize the resources of her committee to get to the bottom of this matter. She will also coordinate with the Department of Health (DoH) to get an inventory of the facilities at public hospitals and determine legislative and budgetary interventions that can improve health services.

"No life should be unnecessarily put at risk, no person should be denied adequate and quality medical care just because they are poor and our government-run hospitals cannot adequately respond to their emergency medical needs. We have heard this unfortunate story so many times already. It's time we put an end to it," Hontiveros added.

Hontiveros filed Senate Bill No. 216 otherwise known as "The Amendments to the Anti-Hospital Deposit Act" that seek heavier penalties on hospitals that continue to demand any deposit or other form of advance payment, as a prerequisite for admission or medical treatment of an emergency patient.