Healthcare
Royal Flying Doctor Service Queensland Protects The Crown Jewels of Patient and Aviation Data with Rubrik
24/7
Automated
Protected
Overview
Royal Flying Doctor Service Queensland has protected business critical data and ensured its life saving operations are available 24/7 with Rubrik. As both a healthcare and aviation organisation, it needed to ensure sensitive patient data and key aviation data were protected from the increasing threat of ransomware targeting the healthcare sector.
“Patient data is everything to us. It’s our crown jewels. Patient care is our main reason for existing, and the motivation for everything we do. For us, care extends beyond the physical – it’s also about ensuring patient privacy is always protected and Rubrik helps us protect it.”
Adam Carey
CTO, Royal Flying Doctor Service Queensland![]()
Challenges
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Cyber security elevated to primary business risk
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Key cloud workloads required protection
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Sensitive data subject to regulatory and reputational risk
Results
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Ensured 24/7 operations
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Automated backup and instant recovery
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Protected critical patient and aviation data
Challenges
Covering more than 1.7 million square kilometres, Royal Flying Doctor Service Queensland (RFDSQ) provides essential healthcare and retrieval services to some of Australia’s most isolated communities. Each year, it delivers more than 98,000 episodes of care which includes transporting 11,700 patients to and from metropolitan hospitals and running more than 5,300 health clinics across regional, rural, and remote Queensland.
Adam Carey, CTO, said given the vital role the organisation plays, the threat of ransomware holding critical data hostage was one of its greatest concerns.
“In the past two years, cyber security has evolved from a side-issue to our number one business risk,” Carey said. “Even against our own organisation we’ve seen cleverly crafted, targeted phishing attacks, especially to our executive team. It shows nothing is off limits, not even essential health services like ours.”
EVERY SECOND COUNTS
With the organisation playing a dual role as both an airline and healthcare agency, Carey said ensuring the fleet of 20 aeromedical aircraft were always available was one of his main priorities.
“We need to protect our data to remain operational at all times,” he said. “If we were to lose access to some of our key data and systems, pilots couldn’t log their flight plans for the day, so they’d have to resort to manual process that could cause delays—every second counts in an emergency.”
PROTECTING PATIENT PRIVACY
While ensuring Royal Flying Doctor Service Queensland’s aircraft are able to rapidly take off in the case of an emergency, the organisation’s dedication to its patients continues long after their treatment.
“Patient data is everything to us. It’s our crown jewels,” he said. “Patient care is our main reason for existing, and the motivation for everything we do. For us, care extends beyond the physical—it’s also about ensuring patient privacy is always protected and Rubrik helps us protect it.”
Results
Rapid restoration :
Peace of mind :
Taking care of cloud :
