Securing the Heartbeat of Care

Imagine a busy hospital hallway. A nurse rushes to a shared computer to check a patient’s vital signs, taps their badge, and is instantly logged in. Seconds later, a doctor does the same to update a prescription. This “tap-and-go” magic is what keeps hospitals running, but it also creates a massive security puzzle: How do you keep sensitive patient data safe when dozens of different people use the same computer all day? And how is that issue compounded as AI and non-human identities (NHIs) enter the picture?

As healthcare organizations accelerate the adoption of generative AI and automated clinical workflows, and even agentic AI, the traditional definition of “identity” is expanding beyond human clinicians. Security teams are no longer just managing human access; they are tasked with overseeing an explosion of NHIs, which include AI agents, service accounts, and automated medical bots. 

With that in mind, sensitive patient information is now increasingly being handled by both people and the automated tools they use. The challenge for healthcare IT is clear: how do you maintain the “magic” of fast, clinical workflows while ensuring that every identity—whether it’s a doctor in the ER or an AI agent in the background—is continuously verified and controlled? Addressing this gap requires a new level of coordination across the IT/security stack, moving away from fragmented tools toward a unified, identity-centric approach and through a zero trust lens.

This is precisely where the power of a converged ecosystem comes into play. To solve these challenges, we are thrilled to announce a new milestone in clinical security: A partnership that solves the identity puzzle once and for all. Netskope has officially integrated with Imprivata Enterprise Access Management to bring “identity-aware zero trust” directly to the clinical front lines.

The big news: Netskope + Imprivata

The integration between Netskope and Imprivata is critical in this new landscape because it secures the clinical “tap-and-go” experience by providing a continuous mapping between verified identity and allowed activities and data, bridging the gap between initial authentication and ongoing session oversight. By ingesting Imprivata’s high-fidelity identity context, the Netskope Zero Trust Engine can apply continuous, role-based oversight. This ensures that when a clinician uses an AI assistant to summarize patient notes or analyze diagnostic images, the AI operates strictly within the verified user’s permissions, inheriting existing limitations from the operator’s human identity profile, with additional restrictions to ensure it is only given the least-privilege access required to perform the specific task it is being asked to do.

By combining Imprivata’s badge-tap access with the Netskope One Zero Trust Engine, we can now offer persona and role-based protection on shared clinical workstations. This means the security “brain” (Netskope) finally knows exactly who is tapping in (via Imprivata) or what is logging on and can instantly wrap a digital security blanket around that specific persona.

This integration prevents shadow AI risks and data leakage by ensuring that both human and non-human entities adhere to the same granular, adaptive trust policies required to protect sensitive Protected Health Information (PHI) across the entire healthcare IT stack.

A day in the life: How it works

Let’s look at how this works in a real hospital:

• The Tap: A nurse taps their badge on a shared kiosk.
• The Handshake: Imprivata identifies them and tells the Netskope One Client.
• The Personalized Shield: The Netskope Zero Trust Engine instantly activates the “Nurse’s Profile.” Because they’re a nurse, they can access the EHR, like Epic or Oracle Healthcare, but if they try to upload a patient file to a personal AI tool, Netskope Data Protection gently blocks it and coaches them on the right way to do it.
• The Switch: The nurse taps out, and another doctor taps in. In less time than it takes to blink, the security policies switch to “Doctor Mode,” granting the specific and different permissions the doctor needs to do their job.
• The Session: Nurse/Doctor works with the HRM, like Epic, knowing that they are able to interact at lightning fast speed and  without compromising their customers’ health or data security.

This “identity-aware” approach ensures that PHI stays locked down, even on devices that change hands 100 times a day.

Why this matters for the business continuity of healthcare

This isn’t just a technical win; it enables three major outcomes for healthcare leaders:

1. Lower costs: By certifying the Netskope client to work seamlessly with Imprivata, hospitals can retire old, expensive point solution tools that don’t talk to each other or work with modern applications.
2. Better performance: Clinicians get the speed they need without slow routing,  hairpinning through old-school data centers.
3. Real security: This integration replaces implicit trust (the idea that because you are inside the hospital, you are safe) with zero trust (verifying every single tap, every time).

Our partnerships with the broader healthcare ecosystem aren’t just a vision for the future of healthcare security—it is a reality you can start using today. The SaaS-to-SASE integration is now officially available to all Imprivata customers when they deploy the Netskope One Client. We couldn’t be more excited to see how this partnership helps your clinical teams move faster and your security teams breathe easier. By bridging the gap between identity and data protection, we’re ensuring that the “tap-and-go” magic that clinicians love is backed by the world-class zero trust security patients deserve. Don’t wait for the next compliance audit or AI-related risk to catch up with you. Reach out to your Netskope or Imprivata representative today to see a demo, and let’s work together to secure the heartbeat of your organization.

See you at HIMSS 2026!

We are taking this show on the road! Netskope and Imprivata will be showcasing this new integration live at the HIMSS Conference in Las Vegas, March 9-12, 2026.

Come visit us at Netskope Booth #10107. We’ll show you how to protect your clinicians, your data, and your patients with a single, converged platform. Keep up with everything Netskope has going on at HIMSS here.