Cyber Security Industry Alliance Newsletter • Volume 2, Number 3 • November 2005

CSIA Member Spotlight


About Citrix Systems, Inc.

Name: Citrix Systems, Inc.

CSIA Membership Level:  Charter Member

CEO:  Mark B. Templeton, President and CEO

Founded: 1989

Headquarters: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

International Offices: In addition to its worldwide corporate headquarters, Citrix maintains regional headquarters and local offices throughout the world. Citrix Americas is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Citrix's Europe, Middle East and Africa region is headquartered in Schaffhausen, Switzerland; pan-European offices are located in Cambridge, England; Munich, Paris, and Dublin. Citrix's Asia Pacific region is headquartered in Hong Kong; regional offices are located in Sydney, Tokyo, Singapore, Shanghai, and Bangalore.

Number of Employees: More than 3,000 in 35 countries

Total Revenue: $741 million (FY 2004)

About Citrix: Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader and most trusted name in on-demand access. More than 160,000 organizations around the world use the Citrix Access Platform to provide the best possible access experience to any application for any user. Citrix customers include 100% of the Fortune 100 companies and 99% of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and individuals. Citrix has approximately 6,200 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. Citrix annual revenues in 2004 were $741 million.

Areas of Specialization: Citrix is the global leader in access infrastructure solutions and the only global company 100% focused on access. Citrix enables secure and easy access to information on-demand, making organizations and people more productive through secure, on-demand access to business information from anywhere using any device.

As the leading technology company that allows people to work anytime, from anywhere, by giving them secure, on-demand access to information, Citrix has a strong presence and momentum in six key industries:

  • Healthcare: Top 10 global healthcare organizations
  • Government: 200+ U.S. agencies
  • Education: All U.S. "Big Ten" universities, 200+ U.S. primary and secondary schools
  • Manufacturing: Top 20 global automotive, top 15 global electronics and top 10 global pharmaceutical companies
  • Financial Services: Top 15 U.S. commercial banks
  • Telecommunications: Top 15 U.S. telcos and top 20 global telcos

With the Citrix Access Platform, the company's portfolio of integrated solutions for on-demand access, Citrix delivers the "best access experience" to its customers. This means that users can easily and instantly access the information they need; IT administrators can better monitor access, safeguard data, control who gets access to what and how, provision access to users instantly and easily, and run IT more cost-effectively; and business managers gain an IT environment that is aligned with the business, increased IT efficiency and security overall, and improved business agility. Of particular significance in healthcare, the Citrix Access Platform enables cost-efficient clinical modernization with centralized application deployment; secure access for physicians and nurses using SSL/VPN; secure, efficient access with single sign-on to applications; optimized access to Web applications; world-class remote technical support of end users; and instant online collaboration.

 

Delivering Secure Access for Healthcare

While patient confidentiality has always been a concern in the healthcare field throughout the world, data security increasingly is a legal requirement and critical to achieving regulatory compliance with laws that mandate stringent access to, and protection of, information. In the U.S., for example, the Health Insurance Accountability and Portability Act (HIPAA) and other laws have brought stringent requirements. Failure to meet these requirements can result in heavy fines and even prison terms. Security is also becoming more stringently controlled in Europe through such recent regulations as Common Criteria and FIPS-140. While privacy regulations in Asia and Latin America are not as stringent, the fact that these regions are part of the global economy is exerting pressure to balance the "free and efficient flow of information" with "the protection of intellectual property rights, privacy and data security," according to the Seoul Declaration on privacy and the Asia Pacific Information Infrastructure (APII). IT administrators are in the hot seat to meet the regulations that are in force in any country in which their company does business.

Healthcare providers thus put a premium on application security and accountability when it comes to handling and maintaining patient records. Yet, to provide the best care, patient records and other data have to be available around the clock, wherever they might be required. Application response time must be optimized, as every second counts. That means providing fast, on-demand access to information to doctors and other providers, whether they are on site or in a remote office-and at low cost. Above all, these individuals must have uninterrupted access to applications and information at the point of care, while they roam from one device to another, and while roaming across multiple wired and wireless networks.

Healthcare providers need to implement an access platform. As opposed to the "if-then" approach, an access platform provides a consistent and integrated infrastructure that can accommodate every access variable.

When approaching methods to secure Health IT, we need to enable healthcare providers to meet these challenging requirements with seamless, secure, on-demand access to administrative and clinical applications-for greater security, improved productivity and lower costs. We need to offer alternatives that help lower the cost of IT, including greatly improving application scalability by effectively increasing the capacity of each application server. We need to enable physicians and other key providers to roam freely, switching from one device to another in the midst of an application session, resuming work where they left off, and maintaining the application display when the connection is lost. Health IT security also entails constructing a system that ensures application availability and peak performance with advanced optimization and traffic management, not to mention providing physicians with easy, secure remote access to information from anywhere.

Finally, data protection is of paramount importance; we must ensure the appropriate program will close the security gaps inherent in a fragmented approach to access. It not only protects information but is also verifiably secure by enabling the monitoring and recording of access session information.

A complete and secure Health IT system will simplify access for end-users, taking the guesswork out of which access method to use. It will provide an efficient and consistent access experience, no matter where the applications reside, what type of applications they are, where the users are, or what devices or networks they're using.

Citrix solutions for on-demand access in healthcare offers solutions to each of these issues. To learn more about how Citrix can help your organization build a sustainable IT controls framework and reduce the cost and complexity of regulatory compliance, visit www.citrix.com/info/cybersec.