For healthcare leaders, cybersecurity has evolved from a siloed IT concern to a strategic imperative tied directly to patient safety, care continuity, and financial sustainability. As threats grow more sophisticated, leveraging social engineering, impersonation, and even deepfakes, identity has emerged as a frontline of defense.
Over the last year, a third of healthcare organizations experienced compromised user or admin accounts. Without high-assurance identity strategies in place, even the most advanced cybersecurity tools can be bypassed.
Healthcare cybersecurity threats are rising as legacy identity systems fall behind
The data on healthcare cyber incidents is alarming:
- 93% of healthcare organizations reported a cyberattack in the past year.
- Breaches in healthcare take an average of 279 days to identify and contain, the longest of all industries.
- On average, U.S. healthcare organizations lose $1.9 million per day to downtime from ransomware events.
But statistics alone don’t tell the full story. Most importantly, these incidents put patients’ lives at risk through delayed care and increased complications.
Despite the clear risks, many healthcare organizations understandably struggle to move beyond legacy security models. Budget constraints, disparate systems, and competing priorities often stall progress, leaving a critical vulnerability: if you can't verify who’s accessing your systems, each layer of protection downstream is at risk.
To help health systems stay ahead of this ever-changing threat landscape, CLEAR and Nordic have partnered to deliver a modern, scalable identity solution. CLEAR brings its secure identity platform, CLEAR1, while Nordic contributes deep health IT experience and cybersecurity program experience and capabilities. Together, we help healthcare leaders strengthen their security posture while improving operational efficiency and patient experience.
Why identity management is the first line of defense in healthcare cybersecurity
The modern threat landscape demands a shift in focus from securing devices to verifying the people behind them. In healthcare’s complex environments, where remote clinicians, third-party vendors, and patients all interact with sensitive systems, knowing a device is secure isn’t enough. You need to know who is using it.
That’s why CLEAR and Nordic are offering a high-assurance identity solution tailored for healthcare. The CLEAR1 identity platform provides multi-layered verification using biometrics, documents, and real-time data checks. Nordic brings lessons learned from deep advisory/planning expertise and hundreds of successful health IT implementations, always ensuring a smooth integration with existing workflows and systems.
This approach makes it significantly harder for attackers to impersonate users or gain unauthorized access. By verifying identity at the device and individual levels, healthcare organizations can close critical security gaps while improving user experience across staff and patients.
Key benefits of identity-first approaches in healthcare cybersecurity
When identity becomes the foundation of your cybersecurity strategy, it strengthens every level of your operations. For healthcare organizations, the benefits are immediate:
- Stronger security posture: Health systems with fewer successful impersonation attacks reduce financial, regulatory, and reputational risks.
- Operational efficiency: Identity-first systems accelerate onboarding, automate account recovery, reduce help desk load, and eliminate duplicate records.
- Greater trust: Staff know their logins are protected. Leadership gains confidence in compliance. Patients experience smoother, safer interactions.
Extending identity strategies to patients: an essential step in securing healthcare
A mature cyber program requires a connected approach that unites workforce and patient identity under a single, trusted foundation. For patients, fragmented sign-in experiences, redundant forms, and weak authentication are frustrating and can create entry points for fraud.
A strong identity framework improves access while reducing risk. When patients use a single, reusable identity across systems, they check in faster, access records securely, and share data with fewer roadblocks. This brings a more connected and patient-centric experience that supports security and satisfaction.
Real-world impact: identity-first security in healthcare organizations
To implement a unified identity strategy, healthcare organizations need technology that protects every user, from the clinicians and administrators to the patients they serve. An effective approach should reduce risk, streamline operations, and support a seamless experience across the care continuum.
CLEAR1, which is certified to NIST IAL2 and AAL2 standards, helps health systems achieve these outcomes by verifying identity through hundreds of signals across biometrics, documents, devices, and trusted sources for secure and efficient access. By integrating seamlessly with Epic, Okta, Ping Identity, and more, CLEAR1 minimizes friction, eliminates redundant verifications, and reinforces access controls.
Organizations adopting an identity-first approach are seeing tangible improvements in security as well as how they operate, engage patients, and manage data. The following real-world examples illustrate how aligning identity strategy with clinical and administrative workflows can drive measurable, enterprise-wide results:
- Tampa General Hospital (TGH), a 982-bed facility in West Central Florida, has automated 80% of workforce account recovery requests with CLEAR1 through a native PingOne DaVinci integration. The joint solution has cut MFA reset times by 99% and allowed TGH to retire its 90-day password reset policy.
- Community Health Network, which has more than 200 sites of care and affiliates throughout Central Indiana, saw a similar impact on the patient side for MyChart account creation. With CLEAR1, the organization achieved a 1.5x higher verification success rate compared to their legacy verification solution and more than a 54% reduction in account-related support calls. These gains streamline access and support a better patient experience.
- At Wellstar Health System — one of Georgia’s largest and most integrated health systems — CLEAR1 has transformed the patient check-in experience. Leveraging CLEAR1’s integration with Epic Welcome, patients verify their identity with a quick selfie and check in within seconds. By linking each visit to a verified identity, Wellstar has reduced duplicate records, redirected over 1,500 hours back to care, and is projected to deliver $2 million in savings per 25,000 patients verified.
Securing the future of healthcare starts with identity-first cybersecurity
As healthcare threats grow more complex, cybersecurity must evolve in step. For organizations balancing limited budgets, distributed workforces, and rising patient expectations, identity is the foundation of resilience.
CLEAR and Nordic are helping healthcare leaders future-proof their cybersecurity strategies by merging cutting-edge identity technology with healthcare-specific expertise and a people-centered approach to secure access, streamline operations, reduce risk, control costs, and deliver a safer, more connected care experience.
Ready to discover how CLEAR and Nordic can help your organization realize the value of an identity-first security strategy? Visit identity.clearme.com/healthcare to learn more about CLEAR1 and schedule a personalized solution demo.