The Rouen University Hospital calls on Stonesoft’s expertise to secure its IT infrastructure
The Rouen CHU (University Hospital Complex) in France is a historic institution providing both patient care and medical education. This hospital complex provides medical care for the inhabitants of the Upper Normandy region (Haute Normandie) as part of its threefold mission as a public hospital, a teaching institution and a research centre. To ensure the security of data exchanges between its various institutions, the Rouen CHU selected Stonesoft.
The Rouen CHU is comprised of five treatment and inpatient institutions, two industrial establishments, 12 schools and institutes and two museums. The complex has an inpatient capacity of 2 452 beds, with a total of 103 000 hospitalizations and 370 000 consultations annually. Between 8 500 to 9 000 employees, including over 800 physicians, are needed to ensure the daily operations of this vast medical and university complex.
The challenge
The gigantic scale of the CHU’s capacity, in terms of both patients and staff, has resulted in a number of management problems for its IT infrastructure. The medical complex therefore decided to re-examine all aspects of the management of its IT infrastructure and network in order to improve the supervision of the existing hardware and software with the objective of modernizing and automating numerous tasks. The IT department was also looking for high-availability service and detection sensors to improve the quality of Internet connections and the security of the data network and Internet.To help it find an effective, comprehensive solution, the Rouen CHU decided to call upon ACE Services, one of its integrator partners. This partner proposed the only solution ideally suited to the needs of the hospital complex – a solution that also had the advantage of being extremely simple to implement.
We were extremely impressed by the wide array of features included in Stonesoft’s StoneGate solution.Once the selection stage was completed, we put the Stonesoft solution directly into production to secure the production site and the entire network serving the various institutions of which the Rouen CHU is comprised. It is very easy to use, and it met our needs without straining our budget.
Pierre Jean Candat, IT and Networks director of the Rouen
CHU.
The solution
The StoneGate solution seamlessly coordinates numerous functions for the CHU’s IT teams. It intelligently manages load sharing via the various detection sensors installed on the network. Maintenance operations are conducted in real time with excellent management of the various servers positioned in clusters with high-availability functionalities.The StoneGate Management Center (SMC) offers a considerable amount of power along with true ease of implementation. It supports a centralized hierarchical data structure for optimal management of the various components.
StoneGate is an all-in-one security solution, available as hardware or software. The solution can be integrated into any type of infrastructure without weakening it. The server clustering and load balancing functions, along with its Multi-Link technology, can improve the performance and availability of any network.
Stonesoft’s centralized management platform (SMC) is a core component of the security solution. It enables centralized administration of the solution’s entire spectrum of functions while unifying their management. The StoneGate Management Center efficiently coordinates the entire solution using objects of configuration, concepts, models, common logging, audit and alert systems, in addition to all the usual administration tools. The configuration unit - designed for easy control of security, networking and “end-to-end” availability - reduces the solution’s complexity, while improving the level of security.
The StoneGate solution recommended by the hospital complex’s integrator partner was put into production on the network without a prior testing stage. The deployment was completed in just three days. The transition from the old solution, which did not have load sharing and high-availability features, was handled very smoothly with point-by-point updating of the various rules. The constant assistance provided by the Stonesoft engineers – characterized by the high quality of their support and a genuine transfer of competence – was a real plus which facilitated the deployment process over the CHU’s five institutions. All five of the interconnected sites now benefit from improved internal communications.
Benefits and perspectives
Thanks to the StoneGate solution’s highly functional performance, the Rouen CHU’s IT Department now enjoys superior ergonomics along with an appreciable increase in ease of use and management. The very complete array of features responds perfectly to its users’ needs. Pierre Jean Candat, the CHU’s IT and Networks director, adds:We are particularly impressed by the performance of the Stonesoft solution. The powerful functionalities and ease of implementation, as well as the speed of the appropriation process, are quite evident compared with the cumbersomeness of certain competing solutions.
The Rouen CHU appreciates the qualities and performance of StoneGate and its management center (SMC), and the IT Department was impressed by the responsiveness of Stonesoft’s teams in providing advice and technical support. The solution’s constant updates, which are performed directly online, have particularly improved communications, as well as the management and scaling of the solution by the staff.
With the objective of increasing the quality and security of its network even further, the CHU’s IT Department also plans to test Stonesoft’s IPS and IDS solutions. These solutions are designed to facilitate the supervision of traffic, the identification of attacks and the automation of alerts and countermeasures. Stonesoft’s competitive pricing also offers a significant advantage, thus facilitating the decision-making process.
