Healthcare Provider Secures Networking Environment with Portnox

HCA Healthcare is dedicated to giving people a healthier tomorrow. As one of the nation’s leading providers of healthcare services, HCA Healthcare is comprised of 185 hospitals and 2,000+ sites of care in 20 states and the United Kingdom.

Networking Environment Challenges

HCA operations in the United Kingdom includes a network of over seven hospitals comprising of over 16,000 physical access ports and 1,000 wireless access points. With such a divergent and distributed networking environment, HCA required a solution that from a central location could provide real-time, accurate network visibility, management and remediation control of a wide variety of devices, from corporate issued devices, to personal devices and the growing “network of things” with various healthcare devices. Automated management requirements included automatic remediation of non-compliant devices and assurance that any unknown/rogue devices would be blocked from gaining network access. They needed assurance that nothing would be left “off the radar”.

The complex and constantly changing device landscape at HCA created a difficult environment for any traditional or 802.1x based NAC solution to function. From corporate issued PCs and tablets, to personal devices of consultants and contract physicians to network enabled medical devices (MRI’s, PACS), finding a single vendor solution that could assure 100% accurate visibility and control was a challenge.

Why HCA International Selected Portnox

• Real-time, event driven
• Assured 100% visibility
• Coverage of complex device environment
• Block rogue devices
• Central deployment
• MDM integration

Securing HCA’s Networking Environment

The needs at HCA aligned well to several of the unique values Portnox extends to the market. Within just a few days of the deployment, Portnox was able to prove illumination and control of the complex device environment at HCA. Portnox’s unique device signature/ finger print capability allowed HCA to quickly and easily on-board the numerous networked medical devices, with assurances of device location and VLAN assignment. With our robust integration with their existing MDM, Portnox was able to assure visibility and compliant access controls of personal/ mobile devices. With Portnox native device compliance and risk profiling, we were able to greatly enhance both visibility and control of corporate assigned devices across HCA’s entire networking environment. All without the need of any agent software, covering both wired and wireless access from a central deployment.

“The NAC challenge at HCA was twofold; we needed a solution which would help us gain full visibility and control of the segmented network, so that rogue/unauthorized devices could be seen in real time and dealt with. Moreover, with the wide variety of IP based devices unique to our hospital environment (PACS, MRI’s etc), the solution needed to be able to authenticate these in real time to eliminate potential threats, and this was achieved flawlessly. The fact that Portnox requires no appliances, no agents on devices, and no infrastructure changes makes it simple and easy to implement. Along with Next Generation Firewalls, Portnox has the greatest potential to defend against today’s cyberthreats. In the BYOD realm, Portnox also worked seamlessly with an HCA’s Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution to check device characteristics and its worthiness of network access. In the absence of true MDM, Portnox can also provide light MDM functionality to challenge the device. I’m very happy I chose Portnox,” said Meena Martin, IT Security Manager at HCA UK