Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago operates 360 beds and more than 70 pediatric specialties, making it the largest pediatric healthcare provider in the Chicago region. Founded in 1882 following the death of Julia Foster Porter's 13-year-old son, the institution evolved from Children's Memorial Hospital into its current form, maintaining a foundational mission to provide care regardless of race, creed, or ability to pay. The hospital serves families across Chicago and surrounding areas, balancing clinical operations with research initiatives and training programs for pediatric specialists through academic partnerships.
As a major academic medical center ranked among the nation's top pediatric hospitals, Lurie Children's manages the full attack surface that comes with modern healthcare delivery: electronic health records, medical devices, research data systems, and the clinical networks that connect 70+ specialty departments. The threat model here extends beyond typical enterprise IT - patient safety intersects directly with system availability, and the regulatory environment (HIPAA, state health data laws) adds layers of compliance requirements on top of baseline security posture. The hospital's scale and academic partnerships mean protecting research data, training systems, and the operational technology that keeps a 360-bed facility running.
The security team operates within healthcare's unique constraints: 24/7 clinical operations that can't tolerate downtime, legacy medical devices with decade-long lifecycles, and a user base spanning physicians, researchers, administrative staff, and external partners. Technical domains include endpoint protection across diverse device types, network segmentation for clinical versus research environments, identity and access management for complex role hierarchies, and incident response planning that accounts for patient care continuity. The work involves defending infrastructure that processes sensitive pediatric patient data while enabling the collaboration and data access that clinical care and medical research require.