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Luzerner Psychiatrie AG Stops Email-Borne Malware…
Healthcare | Customer Stories
Luzerner Psychiatrie AG Stops Email-Borne Malware Attacks with OPSWAT Technology
Here’s how one of Switzerland’s largest behavioral healthcare providers uses OPSWAT solutions to secure their network against email-borne malware attacks.
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About Luzerner Psychiatrie AG (LUPS): Luzerner Psychiatrie AG (LUPS) is a leading provider of psychiatric care across the Swiss cantons of Lucerne, Obwalden, and Nidwalden. With 20 branches serving 7,000 ambulatory patients and a workforce of over 1,400 employees, LUPS delivers comprehensive outpatient, inpatient, child, and adolescent psychiatric services. The organization collaborates closely with hospitals, clinics, and other institutions to offer a wide range of behavioral healthcare services.
What's the story? As one of Switzerland’s largest behavioral health organizations, LUPS receives hundreds of thousands of emails each month. These emails often contain attachments with sensitive medical information, making the organization a prime target for cyberattacks. Prior to integrating OPSWAT solutions, emails passed through their network freely, leaving LUPS vulnerable to malware threats.
Healthcare organizations have become increasingly attractive targets for cybercriminals due to the high value of patient data. Malware embedded in email attachments is a common tactic used by attackers to gain unauthorized access to internal networks, leading to severe data breaches.
This alarming trend is highlighted by recent incidents in 2024, including:
Ascension Health System (May 2024)
A ransomware attack that occurred after an employee downloaded a malicious file, which disrupted its system, including MyChart electronic health records, and led to the theft of Protected Health Information (PHI) and Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
LA County Health Services (April 2024)
A phishing attack compromised the email accounts of 23 employees, exposing the personal and health information of thousands of patients.
Norton Healthcare (May 2023)
A ransomware attack, claimed by the ALPHV group, exposed sensitive information of 2.5 million individuals through phishing tactics.
These breaches are part of a growing cybersecurity crisis in the healthcare sector.
Rising Network Breaches in the Healthcare Sector
The HIPAA Journal found that in the past 12 months, 801 healthcare data breaches were reported to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR), affecting 55,923,612 individuals. In March 2024 alone, 93 breaches occurred — a 50% increase from the previous month.
The frequency of such breaches is rising, causing significant damage. According to IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report, the global average cost of a data breach reached USD 4.88M—a 10% increase from the previous year and the highest on record.
This growing trend has led many healthcare organizations to strengthen their email security, including Luzerner Psychiatrie AG (LUPS).
Tackling a Monumental Email Security Challenge
As one of Switzerland’s largest behavioral health organizations, Luzerner Psychiatrie AG (LUPS) receives hundreds of thousands of emails each month, many containing sensitive attachments like JPEGs, Word documents, patient signatures, healthcare forms, and medical records. Despite having segmented servers and robust firewalls, Tobias Müller, Technical Engineering Team Leader at LUPS, recognized the need for additional protection against email-borne threats.
To enhance their email security, LUPS sought an on-premises solution that could thoroughly scan all email attachments for potential threats before they entered the network.
After evaluating various options, including an upgrade to Microsoft 365 E5, they found OPSWAT's MetaDefender Email Security for Email Exchange Server to be the most cost-effective, customizable, and adaptable solution for future threat prevention.
From a business standpoint, [using OPSWAT] is an important security measure to take to not only protect our customers, but to protect the business itself.
Tobias Müller
Team Leader of Technical Engineering at Luzerner Psychiatrie AG
Implementing MetaDefender Email Security
LUPS implemented MetaDefender Email Security for Email Exchange Server with the following specific goals:
Prevent phishing, zero-day malware, and file-based exploits from infiltrating the network.
Comply with strict Swiss regulations requiring all sensitive healthcare data to be managed on-premises rather than in the Cloud.
LUPS Network Segmentation Prior to Integration with OPSWAT Solution
Operational System for LUPS with OPSWAT Integration
OPSWAT helps us prevent files that could potentially contain malware from entering the network.
Tobias Müller
Team Leader of Technical Engineering at Luzerner Psychiatrie AG
The Value of MetaDefender Email Security
From day one, Müller and his team began reaping the benefits of MetaDefender Email Security for Email Exchange Server. The solution aligns with Swiss regulations, requiring on-premises management of sensitive data, and effectively identifies and stops suspicious files before they enter the network.
Key Benefits
High Detection Rate: Up to 99.20% for the top 10,000 threats.
Advanced Malware Detection: Powered by multiple anti-malware engines with heuristics and machine learning.
Deep CDR Technology: OPSWAT’s award-winning Deep Content Disarm and Reconstruction (Deep CDR) technology, which assumes that every file is a potential threat. Files are deconstructed, threats are disarmed, and the files are then reconstructed in a secure format to ensure they are safe and compliant before entering the network.
By scanning with multiple engines, you get near 100% assurance that files are not infected.
Tobias Müller
Team Leader of Technical Engineering at Luzerner Psychiatrie AG
OPSWAT's Deep CDR sanitizes files by removing threats and rebuilding them to prevent file-based vulnerabilities.
We found that OPSWAT solutions with Deep CDR, is a much better way to defend against emails before you click on them.
Tobias Müller
Team Leader of Technical Engineering at Luzerner Psychiatrie AG
Looking Ahead: Removable Media Security
In addition to email security, LUPS also needed to protect against file-based threats introduced via removable media from vendors, patients, and third parties.
To solve this, they chose OPSWAT's MetaDefender Sandbox to scan thousands of files quickly, enable zero-day malware detection, and extract more indicators of compromise (IOCs) than competing solutions. This solution will be deployed near the Helpdesk team to ensure any removable media, such as USB sticks or CDs, is malware-free before uploading information to the network.
“Sandbox allows you to look at external media before those files hit your network,” Müller said. “You always have other ways that malware can enter your system through information inside USB sticks and CD's. With the Sandbox in place, we will have the possibility to make sure the files are malware free before they enter our network.”
Sandbox allows you to look at external media quick and in-depth before those files hit your network.
Tobias Müller
Team Leader of Technical Engineering at Luzerner Psychiatrie AG
MetaDefender Sandbox’s unique and adaptive threat analysis technology enables zero-day malware detection and extracts more indicators of compromise.
Stay tuned for more on that deployment soon.
Securing Your Network for Tomorrow
When asked what he would recommend that other healthcare providers should be doing to secure their networks, Mr. Müller suggested taking the following steps:
Network Segmentation: Ensure networks are segmented with firewalls between segments to prevent malware from spreading.
Email Security: Prevent malicious files from entering the system via email.
Total File Security: Ensure files from internal and external sources are sanitized before reaching the network.
This is particularly critical for healthcare organizations like LUPS that have multiple branches across Switzerland whose information resides on a single network. Each segment must be protected.
Ultimately, OPSWAT helped turn LUPS into a proactive cybersecurity leader in the healthcare sector by closing the door on malware from every angle. Now, they can effectively protect their patient's data, secure their business, and remain compliant in an ever-evolving threat landscape.
Learn more about how OPSWAT’s email security and sandbox technology can help your organization right now.
