The threat model at Mass General Brigham is not hypothetical. The integrated healthcare system spans two academic medical centers, five specialty hospitals, and 11 community hospitals across New England, serving 2.5 million patients annually. That means endpoint sprawl across clinical environments, research infrastructure with a nearly $2 billion annual budget, and over 3,700 active clinical trials generating sensitive data streams - each one an attack surface.
Protecting healthcare networks means contending with legacy medical devices, HIPAA compliance at scale, and the convergence of IT and clinical systems where downtime isn't an inconvenience but a patient safety issue. The organization's research enterprise adds another layer: intellectual property tied to ongoing trials and partnerships with academic institutions, all of it high-value to threat actors targeting the healthcare and life sciences sector.
Security work here operates within one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the United States. Five of its hospitals are ranked in the 2025–2026 U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals, and the system's stated mission - uniting minds to solve hard problems in medicine - extends to securing the infrastructure that makes that research and care possible. The scope is broad, the stakes are concrete, and the environments are varied.
