Created on 30.5.2007
Southampton University Hospital NHS Trust selects Khipu Networks to secure their multi-vendor wired and wireless infrastructure with Bradford Networks ‘NAC Director’
Southampton University Hospital NHS Trust is the first deployment of Bradford Networks ‘NAC Director’ solution in the healthcare sector within Europe for wired port and wireless security.
The NHS Trust network infrastructure consists of Cisco Systems for their wired network with Aruba Networks enterprise wireless platform. The network team at the hospital were seeing a rise in the number of unknown devices being brought onto the trusts network and had concerns about the increase of threats coming from ‘unmanaged’ and unknown devices. There have been a number of cases where third party devices have been brought to site and require manual checking prior to being connected to the network. This has previously taken the IT Support team’s resources time and effort to complete. With a finite team resource, there was an increased strain from pre-connection manual checking and the worry of mitigation following an attack without the control mechanisms that Network Access Control would provide.
One of the areas that the Hospital had concerns with; there was not any a system to report or measure the unknown ‘rogue’ devices that were being attached to their network. They wanted to make sure that there was a focus on identity management and the solution they needed, had to provide real-time and historic visibility on the physical and logical device addresses, session owner as well as their physical location and their device health.
The Network Manager, Ryan Hewitt, felt that something had to be implemented that would help in pre-admission control, but also make the best use of the IT Support teams time.
“Having chosen Cisco Systems as a standard for our wired network and Aruba Networks technology for our wireless network, we wanted a vendor independent solution that would provide best-of-breed port security, a Network Access Control solution was the best technology we could see would suit our requirements.”
When Ryan and his team started to look at Network Access Control technologies, there were so many different interpretations from different vendors, he felt that he needed to first understand his requirements for port security and what factors were critical to his choice.
As with any healthcare network, availability was paramount. Ryan knew that any system chosen would have to be implemented with minimum downtime and operate out-of-band, so that any outages of the new system would not affect the network availability and ultimately patient care. Another key factor in the implementation of port security was the client-less approach. There has been an increase in the number of authorised network users that want to connect their own devices into the network and Ryan felt that they should have this ability, as long as the client machine was checked.
A number of potential NAC offerings were reviewed, however none of them could meet the NHS Trusts key requirements for a secure but flexible ‘un-intrusive’ network access control solution. Ryan continues:
“Deploying one of the in-line solutions meant there was a risk of outages and a limit on scalability for our network. We needed a solution that would also have minimum impact on the users and the client-less approach from Khipu Networks’ solution met all our criteria as a hospital”
Khipu Networks proposed the use of Bradford Networks NAC Director solution, a proven technology for wired and wireless Network Access Control that they have over two years experience in deploying. The solution could be deployed with minimum disruption to the clinical and administration networks and provided Ryan and the rest of the IT Team at Southampton University Hospitals a solution that would provide security and ease of use for the network team and their customers.
“Southampton University Hospital NHS Trust have realised that there are many flavours of NAC available but rarely are they suited to the NHS demands and infrastructure. Their requirements were very similar to our other NHS customers and we are pleased to have them as our first End-Point Security NAC reference in the NHS!”
Vil Dhutia, Major Accounts Manager – Public Sector, Khipu Networks.
The self-remediation service provided by ‘NAC Director’ also meant that users need not contact IT Support when their devices require updates to the operating system, anti-virus or anti-spyware software.
The deployment of NAC Director will enable Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust to manage their users more efficiently whilst meeting all of the criteria for securing the edge of their network.
About Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust - www.suht.nhs.uk
Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the UK's most successful healthcare organisations.
They provide: local hospital services to some 500,000 people living in Southampton and South West Hampshire; and specialist services such as neurosciences, cardiac services and children's intensive care to more than 3 million people in central southern England and the Channel Islands.
They are also a major centre for teaching and research in association with the University of Southampton and partners including the Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research Campaign.
Every year their 7,500 staff:
- treat more than 115,000 inpatients and day patients, including around 40,000 emergency admission
- see 350,000 people at outpatient appointments;
- and deal with around 85,000 cases in our Emergency Department.
About Khipu Networks Limited
Khipu Networks are a UK based advanced systems integrator, focusing on supplying innovative secure compliant infrastructure solutions across the public and private sector. The company is a leading adopter of new and best in breed technology, expert technical staff ensure that customers get the solutions they need, when they want them and how they need them. The ethos is to ensure that the customer has the edge on the security and compliance of their network and not the attacker. Hampshire based Khipu Networks Ltd are the security division of the White Clarke Group of companies
For further information, please contact Khipu:
- T: 01252 773184
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