The Centre for Reproductive and Genetic Health has more than 30 years’ experience helping patients achieve their dream of a family. Their individualised approach to treatment ensures they deliver outstanding success rates to all of their patients.
The challenge
The Centre for Reproductive and Genetic Health (CRGH) is a private fertility clinic with the highest live birth rate for IVF/ICSI treatment per embryo transferred than any other London clinic. And as a fertility clinic in the medical field, data security is a top priority. “Data protection is very important in every single industry. But healthcare is always in the spotlight — and fertility-focused healthcare even more, because we must follow both NHS data protection regulations and regulations set forth by the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority,” said Mahmoud Makki, the center’s Head of Corporate Services. “A data breach on our end wouldn’t just be extremely costly — it would be devastating, not to mention the inconvenience for the subject of the breach
World events like COVID and the war in Ukraine meant that malevolent forces ramped up their efforts. Makki explained, “We’ve seen that cybercriminals take advantage of these events to start spoofing and launching attacks. We were already using Egress Protect for our outgoing protection, but we knew we needed to ramp up our protection in the face of rising threats.”
CRGH counted on its email platform’s native security to protect its inbound email, but Makki and his team wanted more. “We wanted an extra layer of protection — something that would help empower our colleagues by alerting them to things to watch or look out for. Sometimes people get comfortable and feel like, ‘Okay, our tech team has taken care of everything,’ and it lulls them into a false sense of security — which is the point when something happens, and you’re more vulnerable to attacks. We began searching for the best inbound solution — something effective and affordable without being complicated,” Makki said.
"We constantly received emails from other medical facilities that had “Protected by Egress” at the bottom, so that helped solidify that we were making the right choice."
Mahmoud Makki, Business Development and Change Manager, Centre for Reproductive and Genetic Health
The solution
Together with technology partner Fresh Tech, CRGH evaluated potential inbound email security solutions. “We had an established relationship with Egress — we were already using Protect for our outgoing encryption,” Makki said. “I asked our Fresh Tech consultant if Egress had anything for incoming protection, and she told me about Defend. We were considering one other solution but ultimately chose Egress not only because of our established relationship but also because we found it a better solution. Plus, it’s great to have a single partner for both inbound and outbound protection rather than having to manage multiple vendors.”
CRGH also appreciated Egress’s understanding of UK-based organizations’ unique data security concerns. “We’re very aware of GDPR and other regulations and saw the benefit of working with a UK-based entity like Egress for our security needs. And knowing that others in the medical industry count on Egress raised our confidence; we constantly received emails from other medical facilities that had “Protected by Egress” at the bottom, which helped solidify that we were making the right choice,” Makki said.
"Egress simply does the job it’s supposed to do — the value is definitely there. I highly recommend Egress, especially for companies that can fully utilize the entire security suite. If you’re considering Egress, my advice is to go for it!"
Mahmoud Makki, Business Development and Change Manager, Centre for Reproductive and Genetic Health
The results
The adoption of Egress Defend across the organization went smoothly. “When we bring a new technology or service to the team or the facility, we want to iron it out to the last detail — making it as easy as possible for our users to get started. Deploying and using Egress has been very easy. It feels like a tailormade solution because it does exactly what we need it to do,” said Makki.
Since implementing Egress, the number of potentially dangerous emails making it through to end users has also decreased. “Every month, we submit a board report on the organization’s overall performance and a report of any email alerts that came through — things like personalization exploits and phishing attempts — and recently, we’ve seen far fewer alerts. I believe this is due to Egress; employees have been interacting with it and reporting more potentially dangerous emails,” Makki said.
“Egress simply does the job it’s supposed to do — the value is definitely there. I highly recommend Egress, especially for companies that can fully utilize the entire security suite. If you’re considering Egress, my advice is to go for it!” he concluded.