2 page Case Study - Posted 4/9/2008
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Community Hospital Prescribes Group Policies to Boost Security and Server Performance
Business Needs
The 100BaseT network at Charlevoix Area Hospital—a community, acute care facility spanning eight locations—serves all 350 employees, which include clinical, medical, and financial staff, as well as therapists. The network consists of approximately 180 desktop computers and 14 application servers.
At Charlevoix Area Hospital, protecting the confidential information stored on the 14 servers by securing the hospital’s network is top priority. The hospital not only regards first-rate security as a must to comply with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations, but also as a moral and ethical duty. Therefore, any security enhancements that a server solution can provide are welcome at the hospital.
With this in mind, the hospital wanted to upgrade its domain controller software to Windows Server® 2008 because the hospital knew the software offered stronger security and group policy enhancements than its current software. Strengthening security is an ongoing process for the hospital, and this latest upgrade to Windows Server 2008 moves the hospital one step closer to its ultimate goal.
Solution
For Charlevoix Area Hospital, security needs justified the cost of Windows Server 2008. The hospital’s IT partner, Network Management & Consulting Services (NMCS), identified this opportunity to enhance the hospital’s network security by upgrading to Windows Server 2008. It also designed the implementation plan and deployed Windows Server 2008 on the server that acts as the hospital’s domain controller.
With Windows Server 2008, Charlevoix Area Hospital can now do the following:
* Reduce the risk of unauthorized access through strong end-user and end-device authentication.
* Reduce the number of user accounts and repositories that need to be managed, in addition to managing them more efficiently.
* Better safeguard access to sensitive and confidential medical information.
* Securely manage user accounts and information outside the hospital’s data center.
* Check the health and status of roaming laptops and verify compliance of unmanaged home computers (desktop and laptop).
* Determine the health of visiting laptops (such as those of vendors, suppliers, and consultants) and enforce application layer data inspection by checking for malware.
* Use policy-based quality of service to prioritize and manage the sending rate for outgoing network traffic, and to filter outgoing and incoming traffic.
* Enhance the hospital’s secure wireless network access by supporting networks that use authenticating switches, improved encryption mechanisms, and integration with Network Access Protection (NAP) for wireless specific policies supporting 802.1X authentication.
* Apply different password and account lockout policies to network users and global security groups in the same domain through enhancements in Active Directory® Domain Services (ADDS), which can also reduce the number of domains that the hospital needs to manage.
Benefits
Charlevoix Area Hospital realized the following benefits after deploying Windows Server 2008:
* Decreased the amount of time spent managing its servers by two-hours per week
* Increased server performance by 40%
* Improved security due to group policy enhancements and stronger lock down of vulnerabilities
* Improved end-user productivity due to faster logon times and better access to resources
* Decreased deployment efforts by two weeks
* Improved compliance initiatives
Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2008, with built-in Web and virtualization technologies, enables you to increase the reliability and flexibility of your server infrastructure. New virtualization tools, Web resources, and security enhancements help you save time, reduce costs, and provide a platform for a dynamic and optimized datacenter. Powerful new tools like IIS 7.0, Server Manager, and Windows® PowerShell, allow you to have more control over your servers and streamline Web, configuration, and management tasks. Advanced security and reliability enhancements like Network Access Protection and the Read-Only Domain Controller option for Active Directory Domain Services harden the operating system and help protect your server environment to ensure you have a solid foundation on which to build your business.
For more information, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008
