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MultiCare Health System wins 2026 CSO Award for 'From Department of No to Culture of Yes' microsegmentation initiative. Recognized for an identity-based microsegmentation project across 13 hospitals, 350+ urgent care and outpatient clinics, with 99% device discovery in minutes and zero downtime to patient care. Third Elisity customer to win a CSO Award since 2023. SAN JOSE, Calif., May 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Elisity, the identity-based microsegmentation company, today announced that customer MultiCare Health System has been named a 2026 CSO Award winner by Foundry's CSO. Jason Elrod, MultiCare's Chief Information Security Officer, accepted the award for 'From 'Department of No' to 'Culture of Yes': Enabling Modern Healthcare Through Identity-Based Microsegmentation' - a 2025-2026 initiative that secured more than 40,000 connected devices across 13 hospitals and 350+ urgent care and outpatient clinics without disrupting clinical operations. MultiCare joins 64 other organizations recognized this year and will be honored at the CSO Cybersecurity Awards & Conference, May 11-13, 2026, in Nashville, Tennessee. MultiCare is the largest not-for-profit, locally owned health system in Washington State, protecting 13 hospitals, 350+ urgent care and outpatient clinics, more than 28,000 employees, and several million patients across a heterogeneous Cisco, Juniper, and Aruba network inherited through mergers and acquisitions. Traditional VLAN, NAC, and firewall-based segmentation would require network re-architecture, 6 to 14 additional FTEs, and roughly 300 hours per site, an operationally and financially untenable path for a system serving millions of patients. Identity-based microsegmentation took a different route: existing switches became enforcement points, eliminating new hardware, agents on FDA-regulated medical devices, and network redesign. MultiCare's team discovered and classified 99% of devices within minutes during the initial proof of value, without a single disruption to clinical operations. Production deployment began March 2025 and reached 80% of supported sites by year-end, run by 2 FTEs against an industry benchmark of up to 14. Integration with Claroty, CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender, and ServiceNow extended identity context across the security stack. "Elisity works, does what it says it can do," said Jason Elrod, Chief Information Security Officer at MultiCare Health System. "Elisity gives us the ability to microsegment in a way that's operationally sustainable and doesn't add a ton of overhead - and in healthcare, where you simply can't afford downtime, that's critical. I think what Elisity really does is help us build that bridge from where we have been to where we need to go." The CSO Awards recognize organizations for security projects and initiatives that deliver outstanding business value and thought leadership. MultiCare's win continues an Elisity customer streak of three consecutive years of CSO recognition, following GSK's 2023 CSO50 Award for cybersecurity innovation and Main Line Health's 2024 CSO Award for cybersecurity excellence. "This year's award winners show how security teams have repositioned themselves as strategic business enablers," said Beth Kormanik, Content Director of the CSO Cybersecurity Awards & Conference. "They tackle business challenges by leveraging new technology and ideas and delivering detailed planning and strong execution. Their organizations are stronger for these efforts that protect revenue continuity, improve resilience, and strengthen compliance." An Elisity-commissioned Omdia survey of 352 U.S. cybersecurity decision-makers found 90% of organizations are still falling behind on microsegmentation despite near-universal demand. Programs like MultiCare's are showing how to close the gap. "Healthcare CISOs don't have years to wait, and they can't afford to take a hospital offline to test a security control," said James Winebrenner, CEO of Elisity. "Jason and his team at MultiCare picked the project that gives security leaders the fastest path to real risk reduction without disruption, and the result speaks for itself. That's why programs running on identity-based microsegmentation keep winning CSO Awards three years running." Learn more about Elisity's identity-based microsegmentation for healthcare. Register for 99% Plan It, 9% Have It: A CISO Playbook for Closing the Microsegmentation Gap, an upcoming webinar where Jason Elrod will share MultiCare's deployment experience and unpack the Omdia survey findings. About Elisity Elisity is an identity-based microsegmentation company that helps enterprises stop lateral movement, prevent ransomware spread, and meet compliance and cyber insurance requirements across IT, OT, and IoT environments. The Elisity platform discovers every device on an organization's network, enforces least-privilege access policies through existing network infrastructure, and delivers full microsegmentation in weeks - without agents, additional hardware, or network re-architecture. Elisity is trusted by Fortune 500 healthcare systems, global manufacturers, and pharmaceutical companies including GSK, Main Line Health, Shaw Industries, and St. Luke's University Health Network. Founded in 2019, Elisity is headquartered in San Jose, California. Learn more at elisity.com. About CSO Awards The CSO Awards recognize organizations for security projects and initiatives demonstrating outstanding business value and thought leadership. The CSO Hall of Fame honors leaders who have significantly contributed to advancing information risk management and security. About CSO CSO serves enterprise security decision-makers and users with the critical information they need to stay ahead of evolving threats and defend against criminal cyberattacks. About Foundry Foundry, an IDG, Inc. company, is a global tech media and marketing services company that produces premium content, data, and events for technology buyers and decision-makers worldwide. Foundry's portfolio of brands includes CIO, CSO, Computerworld, InfoWorld, Network World, PCWorld, and Macworld. For more information, visit www.foundryco.com. Media Contact Danielle Ostrovsky Hi-Touch PR [email protected]

'Liquid gold' - MultiCare teams up with Northwest Mothers Milk Bank to nourish infants. April 3, 2026 | By Shannon Whitley Northwest Mothers Milk Bank provides roughly 700,000 ounces of milk each year to fragile newborns in need - all thanks to the donations of mothers. At a glance. * Northwest Mothers Milk Bank provides safe donor breastmilk to vulnerable infants * MultiCare hospitals joined the donation effort by opening on-campus milk drop sites * Donor milk supports NICU babies when mothers face supply challenges, ensuring safe, nutrient-rich food Each woman enters motherhood in their own way. Sometimes those circumstances can affect their ability to breastfeed. Some may have trouble producing milk for any number of reasons; others may be recovering from a physically difficult delivery and unable to produce. Some premature newborns need more than mom can supply. NWMMB is the only Pacific Northwest-based nonprofit human milk bank, supplying nearly 700,000 ounces of milk each year to infants in more than 90 hospitals across five states, explains Joanne Ransom, BSN, RN, IBCLC, clinical director for NWMMB. NWMMB was established in 2009 as a nonprofit to offer safe, accredited breastmilk collection, storage and distribution, as well as outreach and education, she says. The organization joins 31 other nonprofits nationwide that collectively distributed 13.1 million ounces of breastmilk in 2025. As long-time partners and recipients of that milk, the MultiCare Deaconess Hospital mother-baby team saw the need growing for safe, antibody-rich breastmilk and wanted to be part of the solution. A collective effort to feed newborns. In 2025, Deaconess and MultiCare Mary Bridge Children's Hospital both opened in-hospital NWMMB drop sites to provide easier access for local mothers to donate breastmilk. "We've used NWMMB for years to provide breastmilk for our infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU)... and we wanted to bring that full circle," says Kendra O'Brien, Deaconess clinical dietitian. Deaconess receives approximately 1,500 ounces of donated milk per month for vulnerable newborns, which is equivalent to 140 gallons annually, she says. Interested in donating? They've also received thousands of ounces to put into the milk bank. Between March and December 2025, the Deaconess drop site received 7,357 ounces of donated breast milk, which is safely transported to the NWMMB facility for processing. MultiCare patients are now receiving milk that was likely donated by their neighbors, says Sarah Hurley, BSN, RNC-NIC, Deaconess NICU manager. "It's nice to have somewhere in the community, in a trusted environment to drop if off... and give back to your own community," Hurley says. "Families get to know that their milk is doing something good, right here." It really is a community effort to feed these babies, Ransom says. And mothers have been eager to be part of that. "Our first mom who donated had her baby in our NICU for a few weeks. Breastmilk and feeding was important to her, but she couldn't do skin-to-skin like she wanted, which can harm milk production," O'Brien explains. "Under the stress of that situation, it was so comforting to have this option for her baby. They came back when her child was 1, to the grand opening of the milk drop site, to donate." NWMMB cannot fulfill their goals without the generosity of donors, Ransom says. "They're the ones taking care of these babies," she adds. "Each donation and donation drop site ensures there's enough milk for us to redistribute." Following the NWMMB mission to improve the health and survival of the most vulnerable infants, like those in the NICU, nearly 87 percent of its supply goes straight to NICU babies each year, Ransom explains. "We believe that every baby deserves access to human milk, and the way we do that is by safely collecting and distributing it to medically fragile and vulnerable babies," she adds. The importance of breastmilk and access. For NICU babies, breastmilk is "liquid gold," O'Brien says. Formula has come a long way over the years, but it still doesn't compare to the naturally occurring antibodies, probiotics and prebiotics found in breastmilk. It's also easier on premature newborns' digestion. But not every new mother can produce milk right away, or produce enough of it - and some won't be able to produce at all. The milk bank can give mothers peace of mind and take off the pressure, O'Brien explains. "So we're there to help fill that gap in those early weeks," Ransom says. MultiCare Deaconess Hospital NICU manager Sarah Hurley, BSN, RNC-NIC, shows off the new Northwest Mothers Milk Bank drop site for local moms. While bioidentical breastmilk from an infant's mother will always be best - a mother's body responds specifically to their infant's needs - there's still more benefit from donated breastmilk compared to dairy milk or formula, explains Hurley. The longer a baby is in the NICU, the more likely mothers are to end up with supply issues, she adds. The female body responds differently when producing with a breast pump compared to breastfeeding, causing supply to dwindle. Their supply may come back later or just be delayed, but NWMMB ensures babies don't go without breastmilk in those critical first few days or weeks, Ransom says. On the other hand, milk banks also are a great option for mothers who may have the opposite challenge and want to give back to others. Some mothers produce more milk than their baby needs and find themselves with overfull freezers, Ransom explains. "To take that extra milk and dump it down the drain is disheartening because she knows how valuable it was to her own baby," she says. "The hours she spends pumping, storing it and keeping it safe, it doesn't make sense to discard it. We give her the ability to share that in a way that can make a difference." And for mothers whose newborns have died, donating can also make a huge difference in their grieving process, Ransom adds. "Being able to experience a small part of being a mother when they didn't get to take their baby home, and to help feed another baby, can help them to grieve and cope," she says. "Sometimes the pain of that can be too much and that's OK, but for some it's simply a way to honor their baby." NWMMB ensures trusted, safe milk for your baby. Mothers receiving NWMMB milk can rest assured their newborn is getting safe, nutrient-rich food with each sip - the nonprofit follows strict screening, pasteurization and storage processes. Potential donors go through a four-step screening process, including a health history review signed off by their doctor or other health care provider, a review of their lifestyle and motivation for donating, as well as a blood test, Ransom explains. Once approved, they're assigned a number that will follow their milk through the entire process until it's distributed. Donations must be a minimum of 100 frozen ounces at a time, which can be either dropped a donation site or mailed following strict packaging guidelines. The milk is then analyzed, pasteurized to kill any bacteria or viruses, given an expiration date, and refrozen until it's sent out for distribution. Analysis includes looking at the fat, protein and lactose amounts for proper labeling, which can be used by clinical dietitians like O'Brien to meet the unique nutrient needs of each infant. What's next. * Learn more about Northwest Mothers Milk Bank * Find a MultiCare donation site near you * Looking for breastfeeding support? Check out MultiCare's support services Community Support & Partnerships Kids' Health Nutrition & Wellness Women's Health