Dispel Joins White House Initiative Project Lifeline 250 to Strengthen Secure Remote Access for Rural Hospitals

Dispel will provide secure remote access for medical devices, IoT, and building systems to participating rural hospitals during the pilot. 

AUSTIN, Texas — November 1, 2026 — Dispel, the leader in Secure Remote Access (SRA) for Operational Technology (OT), today announced its participation in Project Lifeline 250, a six-month pilot led by the White House Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) and coordinated by the South Carolina Governor’s Office and the South Carolina Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity (SC CIC) program to strengthen cybersecurity at rural hospitals across South Carolina. Dispel is one of several technology companies offering tools, expertise, and resources to the effort as part of its Community Program. 

Launched October 26 at Newberry Health, the pilot is designed to strengthen hospital network defenses, provide backup technology that helps hospitals keep operating after a cyberattack, and identify high-risk medical and other devices used in critical care settings. Project Lifeline 250 builds on Project Watershed 250 in Texas and will evaluate security solutions that can scale to protect communities nationwide. 

Network-connected devices throughout a hospital, from infusion pumps and imaging systems to HVAC and badge access, are typically serviced by an outside manufacturer or contractor. Many of those devices cannot run an agent, enforce multifactor authentication, or log locally, so security must happen at the remote access connection instead of on the device. Verizon’s 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report found that third parties were involved in 32 percent of healthcare breaches. For rural hospitals, where lean IT teams are responsible for the systems that keep patients safe, vendor access is a risk that is hard to see and harder to govern. 

“The most valuable resource a rural hospital has is time,” said Ian Schmertzler, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Dispel. “Tens of thousands of IoT devices, collected over decades, help these hospitals do more with limited staff, but few have a manageable way to see and control what those devices are connected to outside the building. Dispel’s job in Project Lifeline 250 is to rapidly ringfence those devices from the outside world, then let staff control and monitor remote access in one place. That buys hospitals time to see what is inside their networks, with the help of the other tools in the program, and to future-proof them, with every device still doing its job.” 

Most secure remote access stops at the login. The Dispel Zero Trust Engine secures every session from login to disconnect, connecting vendors and operators to mission-critical systems without the persistent attack surface, IT overhead, or workflow compromises legacy tools create. It unifies OT Secure Remote Access, Industrial Data Streaming, Dispel Identity, Dispel Intelligence, and Dispel Compliance in one platform built to make the secure path the fastest path.  

What Dispel Brings to the Pilot 

Dispel will provide OT Secure Remote Access for medical devices, IoT, and building systems to participating hospitals through its Community Program. 

• Rapid ringfencing. A single monitored pathway replaces open access to IoT and medical devices, one controlled channel in and out with no changes to the hospital network itself, so staff can control and monitor every connection in one place. 

• Brokered, named, time-bound access. Every session runs through the Dispel Zero Trust Engine with a named user, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and access scoped to one asset. Dispel’s Moving Target Defense removes the standing entry point so the path closes when the session ends. 

• One approved path for vendors and biomed staff. Device manufacturers, biomed teams, and contractors connect the same way, through a browser or virtual desktop, with no agent on the device and no VPN client. 

• Evidence built into every session. Every session is recorded and risk-scored, and Dispel Compliance maps controls to NIST SP 800-53 and IEC 62443-3-3, so reviewers receive a session record instead of a folder of screenshots. Dispel Identity adds NIST IAL2 identity proofing for high-risk sessions. 

• Cloud-managed deployment. Rapid-Deploy SaaS brings multiple hospital sites under one access model, instead of a jump host at each. 

The Project Lifeline 250 work builds on Dispel’s growing presence in the public sector. In September, Dispel launched its Community Power & Water Program to bring the same secure remote access model to small, municipally owned utilities, and in July, Dispel joined the FedRAMP® Marketplace with the Dispel Zero Trust Engine for Government and is pursuing FedRAMP 20x certification. 

To learn more about Dispel’s approach to healthcare OT, or to request a demo, visit dispel.com/industries/healthcare 

Disclaimer 

Statements in this communication that express beliefs or expectations about future events or performance, including Dispel’s participation in and contributions to Project Lifeline 250 are forward-looking in nature and are based on current assumptions. Actual results may differ materially. Dispel undertakes no obligation to update these statements.