Fortinet, a global network security provider has announced that Manipal Hospitals have deployed its network security solution including FortiGate, FortiManager and Forti Analyzer to strengthen network security and BYOD environment.
The deployment will allow help Manipal Hospitals meet the compliance requirements for data security and access control. While Check Point Technologies and Cisco were in race for this deal, Manipal Hospitals chose Fortinet’s solutions based on high performance, breadth of security functionality and low total cost of ownership.
Manipal Health Enterprises, a part of the Manipal Education & Medical Group, operates under the brand name Manipal Hospitals, it is the third largest healthcare group in India, with a network of 15 hospitals and over 5,000 beds in 11 locations. The hospitals, which cover all levels of delivery from primary to quaternary care, has over 2,000 doctors and 6,000 nurses, paramedics and support staff and treats 2 million patients annually.
The hospital group was looking to upgrade its IT infrastructure hosted at their headquarters in Bangalore. The previous security setup was fragmented and did not have a structured framework to mitigate current Internet threats.
Manipal Hospitals wanted to deploy a broad, high performance real-time threat protection solution to safeguard patient information, secure internet access and meet the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) compliance requirements related to information security.
The group wanted to enable a broad range of security features including firewall, Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), antivirus, antispam, antispyware, application control, VPN, web filtering, web application security, vulnerability management and compliance management.
In addition, to keep running costs low, the healthcare group wanted a solution with unlimited user licenses. And, as the hospital wanted its doctors to have access to patient records − and Finance, HR and Marketing staff to have access to ERP and other applications − while on the move, the solution chosen needed to effectively support a bring your own device (BYOD) environment.
Nandkishore Dhomne, CIO, Manipal Health Enterprises, Manipal Group, said: “We needed an enterprise-class multi-layered information security solution well suited to group hospitals, which had to be highly scalable to keep up with our growth and also offer secure remote access to hospital network users accessing sensitive business applications and data. With Fortinet, we found an end-to-end solution that secures the network with integrated authentication and centralized management without any compromise.”
With the implementation of the FortiGate-800C, FortiGate-600C and FortiGate-200B platforms, Manipal Hospitals has addressed all of its initial security requirements and reduced the complexity of its network security by reducing the number of deployed devices.
Manipal Hospitals is now able to provide secure access to business applications such as ERP, Hospital Information System (HIS), Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) and tele-radiology to all of its users across locations. Also, all NABH IT compliance requirements are being met and managed more effectively.
Bangalore based system integrator 22by7 Solutions have deployed the security solutions at Manipal Hospitals. Venkat Murthy of 22by7 Solutions, said: “We have been deploying Fortinet’s widely trusted solutions for a long time. The implementation went very smoothly. The well-defined scope of work, professional execution and strong support from the customer allowed all deadlines to be met without incident.”
Vishak Raman, Senior Regional Director -India & SAARC, Fortinet said: “We keep innovating to give organizations the power to secure and control their IT infrastructure while supporting business functions, processes and new trends such as BYOD. With our solutions, Manipal Hospitals is able to achieve the level of security required in a sensitive environment such as healthcare, without sacrificing performance or loosing visibility on what’s happening on their network.”