ProMedTek Protects Veteran Healthcare Data Across Distributed Contractor Network with Virtru
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Benjamin Williams
IT Manager
ProMedTek, a medical device company partnering with the VA to provide pain management solutions for veterans, manages sensitive healthcare information across a complex network of employees and contractors. As a company leasing specialized medical devices directly to veterans, ProMedTek handles HIPAA-protected information, payment data, and veteran personal information daily.
Benjamin Williams, IT Manager at ProMedTek, needed an encryption solution that could protect sensitive data across both company-managed and personal devices while ensuring seamless communication with VA partners—without introducing friction that might prevent critical healthcare communications from being delivered.
The Result
With Virtru, ProMedTek now achieves:
- Complete coverage across all devices and email clients through the dual deployment of Virtru Data Protection Gateway and Virtru for Microsoft Outlook—ensuring protection whether users work from company laptops, personal computers, or mobile devices.
- Seamless VA communication leveraging Virtru's existing presence within the Veteran Affairs ecosystem, ensuring encrypted emails are opened and acted upon by healthcare partners.
- Intelligent warning-based rules that alert users to sensitive data like SSNs and credit cards without over-encrypting routine communications, maintaining security while preserving workflow efficiency.
Breaking Free from Over-Encryption Issues
ProMedTek's journey to Virtru began after a failed attempt with Mimecast that never made it past testing.
"We had a lot of issues with things being encrypted that weren't supposed to be encrypted and it was just a pain in the butt," Williams recalls. The stakeholders ultimately rejected the solution, fearing it would create more problems than it solved.
The search for a replacement led Williams to Virtru through a simple Google search, but what sealed the deal went beyond features.
"The ease of use as well as Virtru already being integrated within the VA ecosystem—that was really the big selling point," Williams explains. "We wanted a platform that the VA has already been privy to prior to us."
This consideration proved critical for their use case.
"We really didn't want to introduce any new systems that they had to learn because we feared that they might just not open the email and just kind of blow us off and ignore us," Williams notes. In healthcare communications with government partners, familiarity can mean the difference between action and inaction.
Gateway Protection for a Mobile Contractor Workforce
ProMedTek's workforce structure also presented unique security challenges that a new encryption solution needed to account for.
"We have a lot of contractors that work for us," Williams explains. "The contractors we don't give them company-issued laptops or devices... So a lot of them are working off of personal devices, computers, tablets, cell phones."
Rather than attempting to standardize devices or force specific access methods, ProMedTek deployed both the Virtru Gateway and Outlook plugin to create comprehensive coverage. The plugin provides granular control for users on desktop Outlook, while the Gateway acts as an intelligent safety net—particularly crucial for mobile users.
"With that Gateway, it allowed us to have some comfort for when users are sending emails that might contain any sensitive information from personal devices," says Williams. "Using that gateway was really kind of just a fail safe for us, a catch-all... It would have been super hard to try to force everyone to go to a browser, go to office.com and use your Outlook through office.com."
This dual approach means contractors can work from any device they prefer while ProMedTek maintains security oversight.
"If you're using Outlook in a way where a plugin is available, then obviously use the plugin. But if you're using Outlook in a way where it's not available, then we have that Gateway that's there to catch everything else."
Learning from Experience: Smart Rules Over Automatic Encryption
Drawing from their Mimecast experience, ProMedTek took a measured approach to security rules. "We really don't want to go too customizable," Williams states. Instead, they implemented warning-based rules for the most sensitive data types.
"We really are using those warn-based rules for social security numbers and credit card numbers. We didn't want to automatically encrypt those, but we did want to prompt a warning message to the sender letting them know, 'Hey, this data was found in this email. What do you want to do?'"
This approach respects user judgment while ensuring awareness: "It could have been a situation where they wanted to encrypt the email but they forgot."
Smooth Deployment Through Deliberate Planning
ProMedTek's implementation strategy reflected lessons learned from their previous vendor experience.
"We had an intentionally very slow, deliberate deployment," Williams notes. "We wanted to ensure that this was going to work in a way that we were configuring it to and that there weren't going to be any hassles that we previously experienced."
Support from the Virtru team during implementation exceeded expectations for WIllaims. "Anytime we had any technical issues, [our account manager] would immediately open a support ticket with us. And then the Support Team was quickly responsive—better than the majority of other vendors we've had to work with."
The most telling indicator of Virtru's effectiveness is what Williams doesn't hear from users. In IT management, silence often signals success. "I sometimes have to ask people, 'Hey, is there anything that you may not be telling me that I can kind of help you out with?' But it's been pretty simple."
Positioned for Growth
As ProMedTek looks toward potential expansion into new markets, Virtru remains central to their security strategy.
On using Virtru as they scale: "I honestly don't foresee Virtru really going anywhere," Williams states confidently. "Obviously a different market [for ProMedTek] means more business, which potentially means more employees, which also potentially means more information that might be deemed sensitive going out."
Williams sees untapped potential in their Virtru deployment: "I still feel like we haven't uncovered the full potential of the use of Virtru within the organization yet. There's definitely room for us to grow into it a little bit more with some more rules or even maybe some more custom rules that we might not be leveraging today."
For organizations evaluating encryption solutions, particularly those working with government healthcare systems, Williams offers straightforward advice: "Virtru is just a super simple, easy platform to use. Doesn't take a lot of configuration to get set up. It's pretty straightforward, honestly."
But beyond simplicity, he emphasizes the importance of ecosystem compatibility: "Virtru’s relationship with the VA and other government contracts that Virtru might have—that really drove home Virtru over everything else."
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