How healthcare organizations can strengthen cybersecurity, prepare for ransomware, and build resilience before a breach disrupts patient care.

In this episode, Roy Bejarano speaks with Baxter Lee, President of Clearwater Security, about healthcare’s growing cyber risk, why breaches often begin with basic security gaps, and why resilience goes beyond compliance. They also discuss Change Healthcare, M&A cyber diligence, incident response, ransom strategy, and the growing role of AI in cyber threats.

What You’ll Learn
✅ Why healthcare is uniquely vulnerable to ransomware and cyberattacks
✅ Why cybersecurity is now tied to business resilience and patient care
✅ Why compliance certifications do not equal true cybersecurity
✅ How basic failures like weak credentials and lack of MFA drive major breaches
✅ What healthcare platforms and MSOs should evaluate during cyber diligence
✅ Why incident response and ransomware strategy must be planned before an attack
✅ How AI is changing both cyber offense and defense

Key Timestamps
(00:31) What Clearwater Security provides to healthcare organizations
(01:26) Why healthcare is highly targeted for ransomware
(02:49) Why cyber risk can never be reduced to zero
(05:27) Common causes of healthcare cyber incidents
(06:30) Lessons from the Change Healthcare attack
(09:01) Why compliance does not equal cybersecurity
(13:07) Cyber diligence for MSOs, platforms, and acquisitions
(17:44) What to do before a ransomware attack
(20:43) Why downtime depends on response and recovery capability
(22:24) The brand and enterprise value impact of cyber breaches
(24:38) Why recovery should be minutes, not months
(26:09) AI, attackers, and healthcare’s next cyber challenge
(29:06) Why cyber defense may become “bots versus bots”

Key Takeaways
💎 Healthcare cybersecurity is no longer just an IT issue; it is fundamental to business continuity, patient care, and trust.
💎 Most successful breaches are not “Hollywood-style” attacks; they often start with preventable failures like compromised credentials, poor patching, and weak MFA.
💎 Compliance assessments are useful, but they are only point-in-time snapshots and should not be confused with a mature security program.
💎 Healthcare M&A creates cyber risk when platforms allow acquired companies to remain on fragmented technology and security infrastructures.
💎 The worst time to decide a ransomware strategy is during the ransomware attack.
💎 Organizations that prepare through playbooks, tabletop exercises, monitoring, backups, and recovery plans can dramatically reduce disruption.
💎 AI is giving attackers new speed and scale, but it may also become essential to healthcare cyber defense.

Guest Bio
Baxter Lee is President of Clearwater. He was promoted to President in September 2025 after serving as Clearwater CFO since May 2018. He is responsible for leading the company’s strategic growth plan and managing the company’s overall operations.

Formerly, Baxter was CFO of Entrada Health, a mobile health documentation and productivity platform for healthcare providers, acquired by NexGen Healthcare (NASDAQ: NXGN) in 2017. Before his role with Entrada, he held multiple positions with Change Healthcare (fka Emdeon), a multi-billion dollar healthcare IT company. His roles included divisional CFO of the Ambulatory and Payer Services divisions and director of corporate development.

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