How many connected medical devices are currently operating across your hospital? And how often are those devices moving between wards, departments and clinical environments as patient needs change?
Infusion pumps, patient monitors, imaging equipment, diagnostic systems, sensors and building controls are now an everyday part of healthcare delivery. Juniper Research projected that smart hospitals would deploy 7.4 million connected Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices globally by 2026 – more than 3,850 devices per smart hospital.
For healthcare IT teams, every one of those devices introduces another connection to understand, manage and secure. And they do not necessarily stay in one place. An infusion pump may move between wards. Mobile clinical equipment can follow patients through different departments. Devices may need access to EPR systems, management platforms, diagnostic applications, cloud services or third-party vendor support. As those devices move, they can enter different areas of the network and interact with different systems. That mobility creates a challenge: how do you give a medical device the connectivity it needs to support care without giving it access to anything it does not?
This is where healthcare network segmentation comes in.
Network segmentation: Controlling what can communicate with what
At its simplest, network segmentation divides an infrastructure environment into separate logical areas and controls the traffic allowed to move between them. Instead of every connected device existing within one broadly trusted network, different users, systems and device types can be separated according to their purpose, risk and access requirements.
In a hospital environment, that could mean separating:
- Clinical systems
- Connected medical devices
- Corporate IT
- Building and facilities IoT
- Guest and patient Wi-Fi
- Critical applications such as EPR, PACS and diagnostic platforms
The objective is not simply to create more VLANs. Effective segmentation is about understanding what each device is, what it needs to communicate with and what it should never be able to reach.
That distinction matters in healthcare. A patient monitor may need to communicate with a specific clinical application. An imaging modality may require access to PACS, RIS, EPR and approved vendor services. A guest connecting to hospital Wi-Fi needs internet access, but no route into clinical infrastructure.
The challenge is that many connected medical devices cannot be secured in the same way as a conventional corporate endpoint. Unlike a managed laptop, medical equipment may run embedded or legacy operating systems, operate on manufacturer-controlled patch cycles or have restrictions around installing additional endpoint software. Security therefore often needs to be applied around the device at the network layer, supported by effective access controls, continuous monitoring and ongoing management of the environment.
When segmentation is designed, implemented and managed effectively, it can deliver benefits beyond simply separating traffic. It can strengthen operational control, restrict how far an attacker or malicious process can move following a compromise, protect critical services from unrelated devices and make anomalous communications easier to identify.
Healthcare network segmentation also supports Zero Trust
This is where segmentation and Zero Trust principles start to converge. Zero Trust removes the assumption that a user or device should be trusted simply because it has connected to an internal network. Access should instead be explicitly authorised according to identity, device context, policy and the resource being requested. Network segmentation is fundamental to reducing the impact of compromise within Zero Trust Network Access architectures, because it helps restrict lateral movement and prevents a compromised device from gaining unrestricted access to other systems.
For healthcare, this principle is particularly important. A medical device should not automatically trust the medical device beside it.
In healthcare, where cyber incidents can directly disrupt critical services and patient care, effective network segmentation and containment play a vital role in limiting the scale and impact of an attack. Following the June 2024 ransomware attack on pathology provider Synnovis, NHS England reported that more than 11,000 outpatient appointments and elective procedures were delayed, while pathology capacity and supporting systems had to be restored over several months.
While network segmentation cannot prevent every cyber attack, it is a critical component of a resilient security strategy. By restricting unnecessary connectivity and limiting lateral movement, organisations can better contain threats, reduce the potential for widespread disruption and protect the continuity of essential healthcare services.
How network segmentation supports healthcare IoT
Healthcare segmentation works best when it starts with understanding the environment rather than immediately enforcing policy. Our approach to network segmentation in healthcare aligns with NHS England’s segmentation standards, including maintaining an up-to-date asset inventory, understanding data flows, creating logical groups and assessing risk before implementing segmentation.
Visibility before enforcement
You cannot segment safely if you do not know what is connected. We begin by discovering and profiling devices across the environment, from infusion pumps and patient monitors to imaging equipment, clinical systems and building technology. The objective is to understand device identity, location, connectivity requirements and expected behaviour before access policies are introduced. This is particularly important in healthcare because blocking an unknown connection without understanding its clinical purpose can create as much risk as allowing unnecessary access.
Macro-segmentation creates clear separate zones
At the broader level, infrastructure can be separated into distinct zones based on function and risk. Clinical applications, connected medical devices, corporate users, building IoT, and guest services can each operate within their own logical network areas. Communication between zones is then explicitly controlled, typically through routing, firewalling and defined policy. This removes the assumption that being connected to the hospital network means being able to communicate freely across it.
Micro-segmentation controls communication within those zones
Segmentation can then become more granular. Rather than simply separating “medical devices” from “corporate IT”, policy can determine what individual groups of medical equipment are allowed to communicate with each other. An infusion pump may need access to its management platform, for example, but there may be no operational reason for it to communicate directly with another infusion pump. Micro-segmentation allows policy to reflect those requirements. If one device is compromised, restricting unnecessary east-west communication helps prevent the compromise from spreading laterally through the wider estate.
Identity-based access reduces reliance on network location
Managed devices authenticate with certificates (802.1x) and compliance checks through device management integrations. That identity can then inform policy decisions about what a particular endpoint should be able to access.
From our experience, however, healthcare organisations are often managing a significant amount of legacy equipment that cannot support the same authentication methods as modern managed endpoints. In those environments, profiling, device characteristics and other controlled authentication approaches can be used to identify equipment and assign the appropriate access policy. The important principle remains the same: access should be based on what the device is and what it needs, not simply where it has connected.
Guest networks remain completely isolated
Patient and visitor connectivity has a very different purpose from clinical connectivity. Guest Wi-Fi should therefore be treated as an internet-only service, isolated from internal systems and with client isolation preventing users on the guest network from communicating unnecessarily with one another. This allows hospitals to provide an important patient and visitor service without extending trust into the clinical estate.
Least privilege limits unnecessary exposure
Once legitimate application and service requirements are understood, traffic can be restricted accordingly. A medical device should only be able to communicate with the systems, destinations, services and ports necessary for it to operate. Everything else can be denied by default, with traffic crossing security boundaries inspected according to the organisation’s architecture and risk model. This is the network-level expression of least privilege.
Phased enforcement protects clinical continuity
Healthcare segmentation should not be approached as a “switch it on and see what happens” exercise. Policies can initially operate in monitoring or discovery modes while teams validate expected communications and identify dependencies. Enforcement can then be introduced progressively, under the Trust’s established change-control and clinical safety processes. That phased approach is particularly important where segmentation affects medical devices. Our approach aligns with NHS England’s request that security requirements must be balanced with patient care, and that internal and external communications need to be understood before they are restricted.
Continuous monitoring keeps policy relevant
Segmentation is not a one-time configuration exercise. Devices move. Applications change. Vendors introduce updates. Clinical services evolve. Logs and telemetry therefore need to be continually monitored so IT teams can understand whether devices are behaving as expected and identify unusual communication patterns. Within our healthcare managed services, intelligent and AI-assisted monitoring helps our engineers identify deviations from established behaviour, investigate emerging issues and determine whether policy needs to change.
Audit-ready evidence demonstrates control
A well-designed segmentation model also creates evidence. Zone diagrams, device inventories, data flows, access policies and policy matrices provide a clear record of what is connected, what can communicate and how access is controlled. That information is valuable operationally, but it is also increasingly important when healthcare organisations need to demonstrate cyber resilience and governance.
Network segmentation supports DSPT and CAF-aligned assurance
Network segmentation can also provide useful evidence for your wider Data Security and Protection Toolkit position. The DSPT changed in September 2024 to align with the NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF), moving towards an outcomes-based approach to cyber security and information governance. For healthcare organisations, a mature segmentation approach can demonstrate controls around areas including:
- Asset visibility and understanding
- Identity and access control
- Protection of critical systems
- Resilient network design
- Security monitoring
- Limiting the impact of compromise
The NCSC CAF reinforces the need to understand the assets and dependencies supporting essential functions, manage and control access to systems, and build resilience against cyber-attacks and system failure into network and system design. That makes the evidence behind segmentation important. It is not enough to say that medical devices and guest traffic are separated. You should be able to show:
- What assets exist
- Where they sit
- What they can access
- Why that access is required
- How policy is enforced
- And how those controls are reviewed over time
Segmentation alone does not make an organisation DSPT or CAF compliant. But implemented and documented effectively, it can provide clear evidence that network segregation, access control, asset visibility and resilient design are being actively governed.
Putting healthcare network segmentation into practice
At WhiteSpider, our architects and engineers have extensive experience designing, deploying and managing segmented infrastructure across healthcare and other complex, highly regulated environments.
That includes our work with the All Wales Medical Genomics Service, where we supported the delivery and the continual management of Cisco ACI within the data centre and Software-Defined Access across the campus environment. The architecture introduced secure segmentation alongside a scalable, high-performance infrastructure designed to support data-intensive genomics services and collaboration across multiple organisations.
The principle behind that work is the same one that applies to connected medical devices across an acute hospital: security has to reflect how the organisation actually operates. Segmentation cannot be designed effectively by looking at a diagram in isolation. You need to understand clinical workflows, device dependencies, application flows, vendor requirements, operational constraints and the consequences of getting a policy wrong.
That is why our approach combines network architecture, security, wireless, data centre and managed-service expertise rather than treating segmentation as a standalone configuration task.
Secure the device without disrupting the care
Hospitals will continue to become more connected. More medical devices will connect to clinical networks. More services will depend on real-time data. More applications will move between on-premises, cloud and third-party environments. And clinicians will continue to expect technology to be available wherever care is delivered.
The answer is not to restrict that connectivity. It is to control what connects, where it can communicate, what it can access and how those permissions are governed as devices and services move across the healthcare estate.
Effective segmentation in healthcare creates those boundaries while preserving the connectivity that clinical users, systems and devices genuinely require. For medical equipment that cannot protect itself in the same way as a conventional endpoint, that distinction is particularly important: the network becomes part of the security control around the device.
Done properly, segmentation can strengthen cyber resilience, support Zero Trust principles, provide clearer evidence for DSPT and CAF-aligned assurance, and limit the potential impact of compromise, without restricting the clinical workflows the infrastructure exists to support.
Our network architects and consultants can help you understand your current segmentation position, map medical-device and application dependencies, identify gaps and design an approach that balances security, compliance and clinical continuity. Schedule your segmentation workshop to review how effectively your network is protecting the medical devices, clinical systems and people that depend on it.