Healthcare Industry- Wireless and Network Access Control case study

About the company

Founded in 1994, this conglomerate of various dental offices had its origins in Costa Mesa, California. By 1997, this dental organization extended to 20 supported offices. As of today, this conglomerate extended to 625 supported offices in 19 states. The dental group has been on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America for the past 10 years in a row, and it continues to grow with the goals of expanding by a total of 80 offices per year.

CHALLENGES

This organization was having two different sets of issues, one involving their wireless infrastructure performance and the second involving wireless security and policy management. Though this organization primarily wanted to utilize PM2NET for network access security solutions, there were impromptu needs that arose from wireless. Wireless infrastructure issues stemmed from their datacenter, as they had a redesign to maximize the bandwidth of their wireless for their headquarters as well as all of their satellite dental offices. Staff members complained that the wireless had insufficient performance.

As a healthcare organization, apart from making sure they were compliant with HIPAA, their engineering staff was having a lot of trouble managing users and keeping their ClearPass data organized. There were also end user management issues, as they needed to put a border on their network so that individuals who are not authorized do not get access to specific networks. As a result of these needs, this organization engaged PM2NET to provide professional services in order to design, configure, and deploy Aruba ClearPass in their network.

Assessment and solution

During the discovery phase of the ClearPass project, the organization was receiving so many wireless complaints from their staff, that they deprioritized ClearPass and prioritized the wireless scope. PM2NET agreed to prioritize the wireless scope and proceeded to perform an onsite wireless survey using their Ekahau-branded wireless software to determine how the wireless signal could be improved. This was done primarily in their headquarters.

PMN2ET began by analyzing and discovering the existing Aruba wireless and ClearPass network. Once PM2NET gained a solid understanding of what comprised the Aruba network through the discovery phase, PM2NET created a high-level design document. PM2NET used this high-level design document as a roadmap for the wireless and ClearPass implementation, and then began to implement the high-level design alongside their engineering staff. Once all of the hardware licensing and configurations were in place, the engineers tested the different use cases alongside the customer. This involved testing the business use cases, testing user experience with the newly installed ClearPass, and making sure that ClearPass did what it was supposed to do, security-wise

advantages

PM2NET headed the ClearPass deployment in full: from initiation; configuration and deployment; and testing and closure. The organization was very happy with the end result of their wireless and ClearPass network. There were also no complaints from the staff about their wireless experiences (with regard to performance) once the project was complete.

The engineering staff was also able to easily manage the wireless users on their network once their network access software was optimized. PM2NET engineers deployed the ClearPass Policy Manager in the customer’s infrastructure, integrating it into their network and active directory environment. They also set up two ClearPass servers with failover and redundancy, allowing their policy-managing server to function during mission-critical moments. The controllers were deployed with best practices and integrated with the access points and AirWave. The SSIDs were also configured with policy enforcement for the different roles, such as SSIDs for guests, employees, 3D printers, CAD cam, credit card processing, and wireless ovens. Mobile device management deployment was also an advantageous feature, allowing ease of management for mobile devices as PM2NET configured Mobile Iron with the ClearPass server. In the end, the customer gained great benefits such as wireless performance, the proper configuration of ClearPass, and ease of managing users.