How Sana Kliniken Protects Patient Trust with Continuous Exposure Management

TL;DR

Sana Kliniken is one of Germany's largest healthcare providers, with a nationwide network of clinics, outpatient facilities, and health services. XM Cyber runs around the clock across their clinical and IT environments, finding the exposures that matter and telling the company’s security team exactly where to act. The result is fewer shutdowns, faster incident response across facilities, and measurable risk reduction - without disrupting patient care. Sana Kliniken leadership now treats the XM Cyber platform as essential infrastructure.

The Challenge

Sana Kliniken AG is one of Germany’s largest healthcare providers, operating a vast network that includes about 50 clinics, 58 outpatient facilities, and related health services. With over 40,000 employees, the company’s nationwide network connects hospitals, supply stores, and physiotherapy centers, all critically dependent on constant access to accurate and secure patient data.

The healthcare sector in Europe operates under one of the world’s most demanding regulatory frameworks. Strict data laws, fixed pricing, and complex compliance rules make modernization and IT investment particularly challenging. Consequently, many hospitals still rely on isolated, legacy systems that struggle to share data or grow efficiently. Chairman of the Board Thomas Lemke described a key industry challenge:

“In terms of the degree of digitization and the use of modern and networked tools, the health care sector has a lot of catching up to do.”

Thomas Lemke, Chairman of the Board, Sana Kliniken

To modernize safely, Sana Kliniken needed to overcome these limitations and build a resilient, compliant IT foundation that both protects sensitive patient data and keeps every facility operating smoothly.

This lack of cross-environment visibility left the security team without clear priorities and eroded their confidence in focusing their limited resources. Building a unified and actionable view of exposure became essential to effectively strengthen protection across their global mission.

The Solution

Sana Kliniken chose the XM Cyber Continuous Exposure Management platform, running on the sovereign STACKIT cloud, to significantly strengthen visibility and resilience across its complex clinical and IT environments. The platform continuously maps potential exposure paths and detects weak points that could connect internal systems to external threats. “No single paper, no guideline and no IT certificate really helps us to minimize cyber risks and protect us.” Anyone who relies solely on the fulfillment of formalities as a minimum standard is not acting in the interests of the community. Sana therefore takes the clear stance that security must be actively and continuously lived in the very heart of the IT infrastructure.

XM Cyber’s attack graph uncovers critical exposures in Sana Kliniken’s ecosystem in real time, focusing especially on risks related to medical device networks and mandatory remote maintenance connections. Crucially, the solution allows Sana’s teams to prioritize the fixes that matter most—the ones with the highest impact—without interrupting essential patient care.

Benefits & Outcomes

XM Cyber gives Sana Kliniken a live, integrated view of threats across its nationwide network. By highlighting high-impact exposures, it helps the IT organization proactively prevent costly shutdowns and maintain operational continuity across over 200 operational units. Thomas Lemke framed XM Cyber not as an add-on, but as an essential infrastructure: “You don’t have to see it as a cost factor. It’s a vital vein that we need to keep the system going.”

“You don’t have to see it as a cost factor. It’s a vital vein that we need to keep the system going.”

Thomas Lemke, Chairman of the Board, Sana Kliniken

The platform enables faster identification of weak points, supports coordinated incident responses across facilities, and delivers measurable reductions in overall exposure risks. Sana’s teams can now act before exposures escalate into full-scale incidents, protecting both patients and critical operations.

Key Takeaways

• Europe's strict healthcare regulations and a landscape of legacy IT systems made modernization a real challenge for Sana Kliniken. 
• XM Cyber gave the team continuous visibility across that complex environment, mapping exposure paths around the clock with particular attention to medical device networks and remote maintenance connections. 
• The team can now prioritize the fixes that matter most and act before exposures escalate - without disrupting patient care. 
• Leadership sees XM Cyber as essential infrastructure for keeping the system running, not just another security tool. 
• The platform runs on STACKIT's sovereign European cloud, keeping sensitive patient data under German jurisdiction and supporting Sana's goal of secure digital independence.